Chamber II of the Supreme Court has sentenced to 5 years and 7 months in prison, and a fine of 600,000 euros, to a Social Security official in Zamora who collected for 16 years the pension of his deceased grandfather for a total amount of 549,000 euros, the amount in which you will have to compensate the National Institute of Social Security. As reported by the TSJCyL, the Supreme Court considers this official the author of a continuing crime of fraud of Social Security benefits in ideal competition with a crime of falsification in an official document.
The sentence partially upholds the defendant’s appeal, who had been sentenced by the Zamora Hearing, with confirmation from the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León, to seven years and three months in prison, for crimes of fraud in competition with false document commercial, and crime of fraud to Social Security. The Supreme Court understands that the criminal continuity between all the actions of the defendant, included in a crime of fraud of benefits in competition with falsehood, must be appreciated and that the new penalty is the appropriate one.
REHABILITATE THE PENSION
In the proven facts of the judgment of the Court, it is highlighted that the accused was a public official of the National Institute of Social Security and was assigned to the Provincial Directorate of Zamora, as Head of the Pension Control Section. To carry out the crimes, he used the keys to process the Social Security pensions and made use of “his ancestry” as head of the officials who worked in the Section.
Thus, in February 2000, he ‘rehabilitated’ the pension of his grandfather, who died in August 1993, for which he was receiving personally and unduly benefits whose amount was 549,541.21 euros, until, in April 2016, he gave place to lose due to death. It is also considered proven that he made modifications to the record of his father’s retirement benefit so that he received 35,994 euros more than he owed.
Likewise, she offered to help a friend who told her that she had financial problems, for which she proceeded to rehabilitate a widow’s pension that had been discharged due to the death of its beneficiary, which she replaced by said friend, who from that moment he began to receive a widow’s pension. In the same way, she proceeded to rehabilitate an orphan’s pension for the benefit of that friend’s son, improperly receiving the pensions from her. The total amount received was 13,263 and 5,147.40 euros, according to the proven facts.
CRIMINAL CONTINUITY
The aforementioned friend was also sentenced by the Court of Zamora (she did not appeal the sentence) to 1 year and 10 months in prison for a continuing crime of Social Security fraud. For these last two events, the two defendants must jointly and severally compensate the National Institute of Social Security for 19,259.77 euros.
The Supreme Court appreciates in its sentence the criminal continuity between the four facts considered proven since there are “elements of subjective connection, homogeneity of action, commissive means, affected legal right, the material identity of infringed precept, unfair personal unity and a clamping effect due to the taking advantage of an identical occasion.
Which, in this case, is decisively marked by the appellant’s situational capacity to alter the data in the benefit files of which the different persons benefited by the fraudulent actions were creditors “.Likewise, it recalls that the judgment under appeal does not offer sufficient data to appreciate a significant temporary break between the four actions, therefore, under these imprecise conditions, such a break to the detriment of the defendant cannot be presumed. When setting the new penalty, the court takes into account the criminal continuity of the four actions and also the special devaluation of the action – the sixteen years during which the fraud lasted, the author’s status as a public official – and the result – the amount defrauded by more than 549,000 euros.
