The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court has confirmed the sentence of five years in prison for the continued crime of aggravated fraud for Ferdinand White for taking advantage of his daughter Nadia’s rare disease to enrich himself with 402,000 euros of donations received to pay for medical treatment for the minor. Mother, Margarita Garauwas sentenced in the same sentence and for the same crime to three and a half years in prison, but did not appeal to the Supreme Court.
The High Court has rejected the appeal filed by the man against the sentence of the Superior Court of Justice of Cataloniawhich in turn upheld the convictions of the Audience of Lleida to the couple for concocting a plan taking advantage of a rare disease suffered by their underage daughter to obtain illicit financial gain.
The Chamber considers that the proven facts of the confirmed judgment clearly show that the parents formed the NN Association for Trichothiodystrophy and Rare Diseases of the Balearic Islands, whose corporate purpose was to raise funds for disease research and help families with children. with rare diseases. In reality, the purpose “was to obtain the personal enrichment of the accused.” The father was listed in the association’s bylaws as president and the mother as treasurer.
The court explains that the facts judged detail the frequent and important refunds from the association’s bank accounts to pay the private expenses of the defendants, who received 402,000 euros of money illegally obtained for their personal enrichment.
The sentence, presentation of the magistrate John Ramon Executionerpoints out that the simulation generated by the defendants, by appearing in the media for years, with their young daughter, “appealing to the generosity of the public in the face of the urgency of unrealistic expensive medical attention and announcing an outcome of imminent vital commitment of not receiving such care, also unreal, while providing a bank account number as a collection channel for the donations sought, constitutes a perfectly suitable objective framework to arouse human feelings of solidarity with the girls and their parents, and, consequently, also move them to make the contributions sought by the defendants, who thus managed to surprise the good faith and the best will of various people who thought they were contributing to the cure of the minor, if they had within their reach any possibility of unmasking the fraudsters” .