On February 16, 2023, the Berettyóújfalu District Court announced the verdict in a public meeting in the case of the two defendants who offered non-existent, inexpensive technical devices for sale on the Internet, thus defrauding unsuspecting victims of money.
The court found the first defendant guilty of 21 counts of fraud, 55 counts of fraud and 1 count of using false private documents, while the second accused was found guilty of 11 counts of accessory to fraud and 30 counts of accessory to fraud. Therefore, the 22-year-old man was sentenced to 1 year and 6 months in prison as a cumulative sentence, the execution of which was suspended for a 5-year probationary period, as defined in the legal maximum, and the judge also ordered the defendant to be placed on probation.
The district court sentenced the second-rate defendant to 1 year in prison, the execution of which was suspended for a 3-year probationary period. The court ordered HUF 168,500 in the case of the first defendant, and HUF 108,500 in the case of the second defendant. The court ordered the man to compensate 54 and his partner 34 damages.
In the course of the proceedings, the first-rate defendant compensated the damage in full in the case of 13 victims, while only partially in the case of 3 victims.
According to the verdict, the now 22-year-old man, the first-rate defendant in the case, met the also 22-year-old woman, who is the second-rate defendant, in June 2019. They were friends and kept in touch with each other on a daily basis. In the period from December 16, 2019, to August 10, 2020, the man offered used laptops, processors, video cards, mobile phones, virtual glasses and other computing devices that he did not own for sale on various internet classifieds pages under different usernames.
In order to arouse interest in his goods, the man offered his “products” in advertisements at a favorable price, much cheaper than the real market price. In some cases, the defendant even claimed that the product had a warranty, and on several occasions attached to the text of the ads a picture downloaded from the Internet, from other ads that are no longer live. He even marked the products so that he could send the accessories, box and papers to the buyer, so it seemed even more authentic. The persons who accepted the offer contacted the first defendant on the website or by telephone, who requested that the purchase price of the product and, in several cases, the postage be transferred to the bank account number provided by him, and then send the product paid for by the customer within a short period of time. , which, however, did not happen.
The girl was aware that her friend was making money and supporting herself from frauds committed on the Internet, there were cases where the victims transferred the advance payment or the full purchase price of the goods to her bank account, but she also helped by lending her mobile phone to carry out the frauds.
When the victims wanted a personal pick-up, the man opposed it, citing that he was working and could not do it. There was also a case when the victim agreed with the defendant on personal acceptance and payment of the purchase price, and then the defendant did not appear at the agreed place and time, and later became unreachable. It also happened that the accused rejected the possibility of personal collection citing the COVID-19 epidemic situation. The first-rate defendant repeatedly tried to maintain the trust of the victims who had already transferred the money by sending messages about sending the package, assuring them, taking time and looking for various excuses as to why he could not yet send the paid goods to the customer. Most of the time, the first-rate defendant took care not to identify himself on the advertising pages in the usual way, he gave little information about himself, but in order to gain trust, he also sent a picture of his ID card to the person buying from him.
The two defendants misled a total of 76 people living in different parts of the country – including, for example, Debrecen, Pécs, Szombathely, Budapest, Miskolc, Nyíregyháza, Mezőpeterd, Karcag, Szeged, Eger – with the aim of making an illegal profit.
Dr. Kovács Judge Zsuzsanna Pajer considered the multiple set of acts as an aggravating circumstance in the case of the first-rate defendant, some of the acts were under the scope of criminal proceedings, and persistent intent. At the same time, he assessed as mitigating circumstances the fact that the man gave a fact-finding and confessional statement throughout the proceedings, he himself identified additional victims during the investigation and began to compensate for the damage he caused, as well as the passage of time. In the case of the second accused, the mitigating circumstances are the quality of being an accessory to the crime, the confession and the fact that partial restitution has been made.
The judgment of the Berettyóújfalu District Court is not final, the prosecutor reserved three working days to think about the declaration of legal remedy, while the defendants and their lawyers took note of the decision.
Berettyóújfalu District Court
