06/28/2024 – 8:33
A 40-year-old businesswoman was arrested on Wednesday, the 26th, in Nova Lima (MG), in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte, accused of carrying out scams that caused losses of R$35 million to companies. In addition to her, 11 other people accused of participating in the scheme were detained, including her father and mother. The businesswoman’s parents and three direct employees were released after giving statements – the other seven people remain in prison.
According to the Civil Police of Minas Gerais, which launched an operation called Dubai to dismantle the gang, Samira Monti Bacha Rodrigues, a revered socialite in Minas, had been carrying out scams since 2020. The first victim was a company of which she was a partner and where she had worked since 2018 The company offered food cards, and she, who also used one of these cards, spent her own balance and deleted what she had consumed from the system.
Initially, those who bore the loss were the establishments where she had spent her card balance, but most of them later charged the company itself, which ended up going bankrupt.
Before the scheme was discovered, she started working at another company of which she was also a partner and which offered benefit cards to doctors. The credits were then much higher than in the previous company, and she repeated the scheme: she used up her own balance and deleted it from the system. The embezzlement reached R$500 thousand.
A third company in which the businesswoman became a partner is a company that provides advance payments on receivables, and she also embezzled money from this company, now in the millions of reais, and had the help of employees to try to hide it, according to the police. However, she was discovered by her partners and agreed to return the money. She ended up being reported to the police, who then began investigating Samira’s conduct in the previous companies and concluded that, in total, she had embezzled approximately R$35 million.
In addition to buying luxury goods – the apartment where she lived and was arrested costs R$6 million -, Samira spent it on trips and tried to “warm up” the embezzled money by buying jewelry, which she resold in Minas.
During the operation that resulted in the businesswoman’s arrest, several assets were seized, including jewelry without a certificate of origin.
The report seeks Samira’s defense to speak out about her arrest and the accusations made against her by the police.
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