A 61-year-old Portuguese citizen, recently arrested in Switzerland for committing crimes of fraud, has been extradited to Portugal, the Judiciary Police (PJ) said on Monday.
In a statement, the PJ said that, through the Department of Criminal Investigation of Leiria and the International Cooperation Unit, it carried out the extradition of the man detained in Switzerland, in compliance with a European arrest warrant issued by the Judicial Court of the District of Santarém.
The extradition follows the commission of 25 crimes of qualified fraud and three crimes of forgery or counterfeiting of documents, committed in 2004 and 2005, in various areas of Portugal.
According to the PJ, the first known case occurred in Torres Novas, constituting the ‘modus operandi’ of the suspect the counterfeiting of certified checks, from a banking institution, titled by two companies, one in the pharmaceutical sector and the other in insurance.
The man resorted to “newspaper classifieds, specifically promotions for the sale of vehicles by private individuals, selected the victims and, after telephone contact, followed by personal contact where he made the purchase of vehicles, receiving counterfeit checks as a form of payment with the value of the sale”.
The PJ adds that the man acted in co-authorship with another Portuguese citizen, both with the complicity of two other people, “having investigated and identified the fraudulent acquisition of 14 top-of-the-range vehicles, recovered in the Greater Porto region”.
The Judiciary Police traveled to Switzerland, where the detainee was handed over to them by the Swiss authorities, having proceeded to deliver him to the prison services, to serve the sentence of 12 years in prison, in which he was sentenced.
2023-04-17 11:43:24
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