The Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife has sentenced three young people to two years in prison for forging and using 50-euro bills and forces them to return 350 divided among the seven people they managed to deceive, at a rate of one hundred euros per month and they are also imposed another fine of 600 euros.
The agreement was reached accordingly and a minor is also involved whose cause has been processed in the corresponding jurisdiction.
The Prosecutor’s Office considered that three years in prison should be imposed on each of them, the payment of the sanction and the return of the money for considering them responsible for a crime of counterfeiting currency and fraud, but finally it was decided to lower the sentence due to the agreement achieved and taking into account the mitigation of undue delays.
The Public Ministry also agreed that the young people do not go to prison in exchange for not committing crimes during the two-year period.
The facts date back to 2013 when one of the defendants dedicated himself to manufacturing 50-euro bills with a printer in La Laguna.
Subsequently, they delivered them in exchange for receiving 20 euros for distribution to various establishments in Tenerife, a task that the other two defendants and the minor were in charge of.
In this way they made various purchases in different establishments and thus ordered a pizza, whose delivery man did not realize the scam; and they tried to buy a cell phone but when the store owner noticed the counterfeit, the minor would have taken it “carelessly”.
They paid in the same way in a fruit store and upon realizing it, the employee ordered her to return the money, for which she gave them forty euros back, then fleeing in a car.
Between the months of March and April of that year they made several purchases in a hardware store and a bakery but without success; They also entered a bar in Tejina but on this occasion the owner also noticed the scam, so the defendants fled the place.
At the end of that month they tried to acquire various effects in an establishment located on Avenida de Los Menceyes but the operation was also unsuccessful.
Finally, at the beginning of April, in a bar on Avenida de Los Majuelos in La Laguna, they paid for some sandwiches with one of these bills, but since the owner did not realize that it was false, he returned the corresponding change.
In addition, there were four other victims who managed to endorse the counterfeit 50 euros, so they began to circulate among various people.
The judicial procedure has remained paralyzed from June 2016 to February 2021, which is why the mitigation of undue delays has been applied.
