The Prosecutor has requested a sentence of three years in prison for a woman accused of collecting the widow’s pension of her partner’s mother until 2016, even though she had been dead since 1998, according to the indictment from the Public Ministry.
The start of the trial is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. this Wednesday, February 14, in room 006 of the Third Section of the Provincial Court of Murcia.
The accused, born in 1971 in Alhama de Murcia and with no criminal record, was the romantic partner of the son of the beneficiary of the pension, with whom she lived with her children in Las Torres de Cotillas.
In turn, the defendant’s partner and son of the beneficiary of the widow’s pension died on November 1, 2007.
The true beneficiary, who died in 1998, was the beneficiary of an ordinary Swiss widow’s pension, the payment of which had been made by the Swiss Compensation Fund since November 1, 1985, following a resolution of January 13, 1986 that recognized her right to this benefit.
The Swiss Compensation Fund deposited the corresponding amount monthly from that date into the various accounts provided by the beneficiary, which was communicated by correspondence with the financial institution.
The beneficiary of the pension died on January 6, 1998, although this fact was not communicated to the Swiss Compensation Fund until January 22, 2016 by the Spanish Ministry of Justice.
The Prosecutor therefore determines that the accused, with the aim of obtaining a “property benefit” and “profiting from someone else’s property”, did not notify the Swiss authorities of the death of the beneficiary and continued collecting her pension since February 1998.
Initially, the pension was about 240 euros and, finally, about 430 euros per month, according to the Public Ministry, which has indicated that the Swiss Compensation Fund, through the International Judicial Cooperation, has determined that the amount improperly collected is of 88,479 Swiss francs, that is, 79,296.468 euros.
During the time that the alleged scam lasted, the Prosecutor points out that the Swiss Compensation Fund requested life and status certificates in order to continue paying the pension.
For this reason, the accused proceeded to send various handwritten certificates that included the signature of an official of the Las Torres de Cotillas City Council and the seal of the aforementioned Consistory, without having been signed by him.
Likewise, it provided various seals, according to the certificate: that of the Civil Registry and that of the Peace Court of Las Torres de Cotillas. To achieve this, the accused used the death certificate of her partner, proceeding to transfer the seal and signature of the official to the document that certified the beneficiary’s certificate of life. All of this, with the sole purpose of continuing to collect her pension.
The Prosecutor considers that the accused is the author of a crime of fraud aggravated by the amount and a continuing crime of document falsification for which a sentence of three years in prison should be imposed.
Regarding Civil liability, the Prosecutor requests that the accused compensate the Swiss Compensation Fund with 79,296 euros. This amount must be increased in legal interest in accordance with the provisions of the legislation.
