A defaulting civil guard sentenced to two years in prison for defrauding a colleague of 36,000 euros

A Civil Guard agent has been sentenced to two years in prison for defrauding 36,000 euros from a colleague with whom he worked at the Ministry of Education. The convicted guard, according to the Provincial Court of Madrid, had several debts with credit institutions and used his partner’s data to contract several telephone lines and loans that he also stopped paying. The victim realized this when he tried to get a loan to renovate his kitchen and discovered that he had been registered in the defaulter file for the loans that his partner had taken out in his name and had not returned.

The sentence, to which elDiario.es has had access, declares it proven that both civil guards worked together on surveillance duty at the Ministry of Education throughout 2017. The convicted person accumulated more than 18,000 euros in non-payments to various financial entities. credit, he appeared in the file of Asnef defaulters and devised a plan to be able to continue obtaining loans: he would pretend to be his companion at the sentry box to get it.

The opportunity came shortly after, when the Civil Guard assigned his colleague to the Balearic command and began to collect documentation for the transfer to Palma. The scammer then got everything he needed: payroll, tax returns and even his partner’s National Identity Document (DNI). In just a few months, the civil guard used the worker’s data to register telephone lines and contract three loans with Cofidis and Cetelem that totaled, between them, 36,000 euros. He also tried without success to sign up for a credit card with Wizink.

The victim went to live in Palma and did not discover anything until he tried to take out a loan himself to renovate the kitchen of the house he had just bought in the city where he was stationed. The entity informed him that he could not obtain more money because he already had several unpaid loans and was registered as a defaulter with the Asnef. The agent, who had never requested a loan, reported the facts and the investigation quickly led to his former surveillance partner at the Ministry of Education.

The Internal Affairs department of the Civil Guard discovered that the money from those unpaid loans had gone to a bank account linked to the other agent’s family, where they even deposited his payroll. Also that a good part of the calls to the credit institutions to obtain the money had been made from Madrid or Malaga, cities where the convicted person had been, while the victim was already in the Balearic Islands in his new destination. Finally, the convicted agent had used his official Civil Guard phone in some of the fraudulent contracts.

The “strong evidence” against the civil guard

The Provincial Court of Madrid has chosen to impose two years in prison and a fine of 1,980 euros on this civil guard, in addition to forcing him to return the money to the credit institutions, annul those contracts and establish compensation of 12,000 euros for moral damages. for his former partner. The accused, as this newspaper has learned, has appealed his sentence and both the Prosecutor’s Office and the private prosecution carried out by his own partner have asked the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid to confirm the sanction.

The judges attribute the crime of fraud to him in conjunction with another of falsification of documents and revelation of secrets, imposing a lower sentence than the one requested by the Prosecutor’s Office at first. The court takes into account as undue delay that the process took more than five years to reach trial and have a first sentence. The result is a sentence that, in principle, does not imply mandatory entry into prison as long as you comply with all your financial obligations. It can also lead to your expulsion from the Civil Guard through disciplinary means.

During the trial, the convicted agent proclaimed his innocence and also reported that he could not appear in the trial due to health problems, something that was ruled out by both the coroner and the Provincial Court itself. There is “compelling evidence” against him, says the court, which highlights that precisely as a civil guard his mission was to comply with the law, not break it: “We must attend to the moral reprehensibility of the acts, committed by abusing the trust that must preside among colleagues, members of the Civil Guard, whose task is to ensure compliance with the Law, which must have had a significant impact on the victim.”

The agent affected by the scam reported that his partner had to sell an apartment below the market value to face the economic consequences of the debts generated by his partner. “It has caused him difficulties and economic damage, he has not been able to obtain loans or even financing or installment purchases for the acquisition of goods, financing that is very necessary as a result of his new destination in Mallorca,” the Court recognizes.