The Provincial Court of Madrid has imposed four years in prison on the personal computer scientist of Lucrecia Botín, film producer and cousin of the president of Banco Santander, for taking advantage of his job to get more than a million euros from his accounts. He has also been sentenced to return part of the money to a marriage used by the computer scientist to channel the money that for years he drew from the Botín accounts for his personal expenses, some of them abroad.
Third conviction of the Supreme Court for fraud against the lawyer who denounced the Government for 8M
Further
Lucrecia Botín is one of the daughters of the banker Jaime Botínone of Emilio Botín’s brothers, and therefore a cousin of Ana Patricia Botinpresident of the Santander Bank since 2014. In her professional career, Lucrecia Botín has dedicated herself to the world of cinema: founder of the production company Morena Films, in her history she has hits such as Celda 211 (co-production in 2009), Altamira (2016), or Campeones (2018). . Currently, she is also president of the Santander Film Festival.
It was in 2010 when she met a computer scientist who worked for her production company and proposed that he become her personal computer scientist, for her and for members of her family. He did it for years, developing a relationship of trust and friendship with her and her children, until in 2019 strange charges began to arrive on Lucrecia Botín’s credit cards. Expenses, for example, in Mexico, where she had never been.
The film production company asked its trusted computer scientist, but he denied knowing anything about those expenses. Some expenses and outflows of money from his accounts that, according to the Justice, were his: he had used the trust that the Botín family had placed in him to change keys, passwords and get hold of his money with impunity, more than a million euros in total . He was discovered in 2021 and sent to provisional prison, where he has remained ever since.
The case came to trial at the Provincial Court of Madrid last March and, as elDiario.es has learned, it has ended in a conviction. Four years in prison for the computer scientist for a crime of “hyperagravated” fraud in addition to a fine of 2,160 euros and the obligation to return a large part of the money he stole to Lucrecia Botín: a total of 988,284.39 euros. The rest of the money, another 104,130.22 euros more, must be returned by the couple to whom she sometimes used to channel the loot without raising suspicions that she was looting her accounts.
From PayPal to American Express
The sentence declares it proven that this computer scientist, due to his work and the trust that the producer placed in him, had access to all his “private and economic” data: from American Express credit cards to his personal PayPal account through his email Gmail email. He used all this information to, according to the judges, “concoct a plan in order to appropriate significant amounts of money.”
He did it for at least three years, between 2017 and 2020. He created several accounts on the PayPal online payment platform in the name of Botín and some of his relatives, linked it to their credit cards and began to transfer money to the new ones. ghost accounts. Almost a million euros that he not only used, for example, to stay in hotels but also channeled through an account of his own mother, oblivious to all this according to the magistrates.
He had two allies in this operation who also sat on the bench. A couple who took care of her mother and who saw how more than 100,000 euros of Lucrecia Botín’s money went to their PayPal accounts, although they did not know that the money came from a scam. The Prosecutor’s Office even requested four years in prison for them, but the Madrid court understands that they did not know that the money came from a robbery and only sentences them, as participants for profit, to return that part of the money.
The trial took place in the halls of the Provincial Court of Madrid in mid-March. The computer scientist denied the facts, affirmed that the money he sent to the couple was his and not Lucrecia Botín’s and that it came from his work: “The change from Windows to Apple, as well as conditioning all the devices in the different family houses” , said. He also said that his client and complainant was aware of all those expenses.
The film production company categorically denied this. She explained that in 2018 she called him for the first time to ask about some strange expenses in Orlando, an American city where she had not been. On another occasion, while in Switzerland, a business did not accept his credit card and the company informed him that the problem was in expenses in Mexico, where he had not been either. The computer scientist, she said at trial, tried to “repay some small amounts.”
The investigation launched first by Bankinter and then by the Central Operating Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard led to this computer scientist, who was sent to provisional prison in 2021 until his recent four-year prison sentence. He acted, says the sentence, “deceiving those responsible for the banking entities by posing as the owner of the bank accounts and cards, and even also the complainant.”
The couple to whom he transferred part of the money, on the other hand, is acquitted although they will have to pay more than 100,000 euros: they acted, say the judges, “without necessarily suspecting that the money could come from the cards of the person for whom the accused worked and that he was defrauding the complainant”. Sources of the case explain that the computer scientist has not appealed but that these two responsible for profit have taken their sentence to the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid.
