On 22 April 2021, the Berettyóújfalu District Court pronounced a verdict in the case of the accused who constantly threatened and blackmailed the victim to obtain money.
The court found the accused guilty of continuing to commit extortion with a serious threat and therefore sentenced him to 2 years in prison, the execution of which was suspended for a probation period of 5 years. In addition to the 18-year-old boy, the judge also ordered probation supervision.
According to the facts established by the court, the victim bought two motorcycles from the defendant’s father for 60,000 forints in July 2017. The accused and the victim met on the street in August 2018, and the 18-year-old boy informed the victim that the second motorcycle he had purchased belonged to a Romanian citizen who had been stolen from him by an unknown person.
The defendant told the unsuspecting man that if he did not pay him, the person from whom the engine was stolen would send beaters and blow up the man’s house with a rocket. The mentally ill victim was frightened by the accused’s threat, so he gave 50,000 forints from his pension that month. The accused did not need more, and from then until July 31, 2019, he constantly threatened the victim with the need to give him his pension, because if he did not do so, he and the owner of the engine would beat him and even lose his house. In fear of the old man, he handed over 40,000 forints to the accused every month as his pension arrived, but he protested several times. The accused kept the man in fear and threatened that if he didn’t give money, “big people would come and threaten him”.
The defendant even wanted to persuade the victim to take out a loan, but the documents submitted did not meet the conditions for granting the loan. The constant threats made by the 18-year-old boy for a year aroused such fear in the victim, partly because of his illness, and partly because he feared the accused, who was younger and stronger, that he had given him HUF 545.00.
Mrs. Kovács dr. Judge Zsuzsanna Pajer considered the continuing offense as an aggravating circumstance in the reasoning of the verdict while taking into account the mitigating circumstance that the accused young adult, mildly mentally handicapped, the victim forgave him and with less momentum
The verdict was not final, the prosecutor aggravated, while the defendant and his counsel filed an appeal for acquittal.
Debrecen General Court
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