The court sentenced a man to four years in prison for pretending to be a high-ranking secret agent and tricking more than 26 million forints into the victims’ trust, a spokesman for the Debrecen Tribunal told MTI.
Dénes Dobó stated that the Debrecen District Court of First Instance had sentenced the accused to six years’ imprisonment for a criminal offense, a misdemeanor of harassment, and misuse of firearms or ammunition ordered the confiscation of assets worth 1,8 million HUF. The court confiscated the confiscated firearm and ammunition.
The Debrecen General Court, which is hearing at second instance, reversed the first-instance judgment to the extent that it found a fraud offense in respect of a commercial offense instead of a fraud, the spokesman said.
According to the facts, the man, by pretending to be a high-ranking secret agent, extorted large sums of money from the victims, citing various untrue reasons, so that from 2014 to the fall of 2017, he approached more affluent people using his son’s acquaintances.
In all cases, the man surrendered to a high-ranking secret agent, such as the head of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (FRONTEX), and regularly referred to his extensive network of contacts.
The man most often claimed that the money was needed for the medical treatment and surgery of his father and mother abroad, and then asked for money for the funeral expenses after his father’s death. In the case of one of the victims, the relationship of trust was also strengthened by the accused taking the unsuspecting man with him to a “covert action he controlled” so that he could be convinced of the veracity of his allegation.
Due to the relationship of trust, the victims paid the accused, some of whom gave the man a larger loan on several occasions. The accused caused more than HUF 26 million in damages to the six victims, which was not recovered, nor did he intend to repay the money.
In 2017, the defendant also asked his son to borrow various sums of money, which after a while the son no longer fulfilled. Therefore, between August and November 2017, the accused regularly harassed his own son on a cell phone, calling him almost a hundred and seventy times to give him money. The man filed a private motion against his father for harassment.
After the man was arrested on November 21, 2017, police found an unauthorized firearm and 16 pieces of ammunition in an opening at the top of a built-in closet during a house search in an apartment rented by the defendant.
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