“The gutter scam”. A man from Cluj was sentenced to life imprisonment after stealing a woman’s agonized pension, pretending to be a gutter fitter

A 23-year-old Cluj man from Câmpia Turzii was sentenced a few days ago to prison with execution for qualified theft, after relieving an 85-year-old victim of his pension savings, almost one thousand euros. The mode of operation attracts attention.

Thus, according to the data from the file in which the man was sentenced a few days ago by the Turda Court, the act was committed on March 17, 2021, when the defendant, accompanied by another unidentified person of approximately 50 years, traveled in a car gray color at the building of a man, to whom he proposed to change the gutters on the roof, but the latter refused and invited the two to leave the yard. Then, the defendant and the other person got into the car and went to the neighboring building, at no. 52, the residence of the victim, an 85-year-old woman. The defendants illegally entered the injured person’s yard, under the pretext of wanting to change the gutters. The victim accepted, at which point the two took a ladder from the shed, climbed onto the roof, dismantled the old gutters and, over a distance of 6 meters, from the corner of the entrance to the cellar, to the entrance to the shed, mounted new gutters.
At one point, the defendant entered the kitchen of the house and stole 4,800 lei from a drawer. Then, upon completion of the work, the two did not ask the injured person for any payment, although this was offered, after which they left.

The initially visited neighbor, suspecting that something was wrong, went to the home of the injured person, on which occasion he noticed that the two hurriedly leave the yard, get into the car and leave. The victim checked where the money was and found it missing. A day later, her daughter came to visit the injured person, who noticed the new gutters and asked her mother what happened, and she told her what was shown above. The witness noticed the lack of money, which is why he called his brother, and he called 112.

During the investigation of the crime scene, two fingerprints were taken from the outside of the installed gutters, and it was later found that the fingerprint raised from the installed gutter near the access door to the cellar was created by the digito-palmar region of the defendant’s left hand . Moreover, the defendant was recognized by the neighbor as the person who proposed changing the gutters and whom he saw leaving the victim’s yard.

It is noted that on March 18, one day after the events, the victim’s daughter took out the pension, going to put the money in a drawer in the kitchen, where she had stored sums of money collected from previous pensions in a handkerchief. His daughter did not find the deposited sum of 4,000 lei, at which time, checking a wallet in which the sum of 800 lei was found, she found that the money was also missing from there. Being asked by her daughter what happened to the money, she told her that she did not know, but told her that on March 17 at around 2 p.m., two men came with a light-colored SUV and entered the yard, under the pretext that they want to change his gutters. He accepted, and they took a ladder from the shed, dismantled the gutters in front of the shed and installed more shiny ones. After about 30 minutes the two finished, they did not ask for any money, he offered them money, but they refused, after which they left. At that moment, he checked the handkerchief where he keeps the sums of money and noticed that they were missing, but he did not worry for the moment, thinking that he had put them somewhere else, also then noticing the fact that the money was missing from the wallet. He stated during the criminal investigation that he wants to recover the damage.

The defendant, a resident of Cluj from Câmpia Turzii, was sentenced by the Turda Court, on March 29, to two years in prison for aggravated theft, with execution under detention. “As for the seriousness of the facts held against the defendant, the court has in mind the concrete way of committing it – that modus operandi specific to people from poor backgrounds, namely through home invasion, stealing an appreciable amount of money from the home of an elderly person, taking advantage of her age. Equally, the defendant’s behavior demonstrates an inclination towards easy and illegal obtaining of money, without work”, the court appreciated. “Thus, even if from the point of view of the objective conditions – i.e. the 2-year prison sentence would allow the application of the suspension under the supervision of the execution, the court considers that the defendant, due to his personal circumstances, but also the way of operation in this case, does not present to at this moment there are sufficient guarantees that his simple conviction – with the suspension of the execution of the sentence – will cause him not to commit other crimes”.

The decision can be appealed within ten days of communication.

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