Alicante lawyer sentenced to prison for deception

A 44-year-old lawyer in the city of Alicante was given eleven months in prison by the Alicante Provincial Court for lying to a client. He talked her into hiring him as a professional for a number of property and tax matters, then charged her for his services without doing the work that they agreed to do.

The lawyer admitted to stealing money and came to a deal with the public prosecutor’s office and the private prosecution. This means that the court believes he is still responsible for the crime.

The court agrees to use the mitigating factor of undue delay to account for the time that has passed between the crimes and the hearing.

There is information in the decision that the defendant used the fact that he was the cousin of the person who was hurt and trusted by that person to get her to hire him as a lawyer.

So, in May 2017, he was able to get the client to give him his first case, which was a law issue related to an inheritance from her parents. To begin, the accused asked her to give him 950 euros right away as payment for his fees.

Later, in 2018, he persuaded the person who was hurt to send him several amounts of money: 12,700, 3,200, 4,000, and 1,500 euros. This was for another matter related to paying the property transfer tax. He even sent her the form that was filled out, making it look like he had taken care of the bankruptcy before the Tax Agency, even though he hadn’t.

Later that same year, she was able to get him to send her another 2,004 euros so that she could file an appeal against having to pay capital gains tax on a house she had sold for less than she paid for it. When it came time to pay the VAT tax in 2019, the same thing happened.

The court decision said that the lawyer “took all of the money and used it for his own purposes without keeping the promises of the agreed professional arrangements.”

In addition to the 11-month prison sentence, the judge said the accused must pay the injured client 21,523 euros to cover the payments they got.