Two leaders of a network of staff investment agencies guilty of cheating the state will serve their prison sentence at home. The accomplices were working in the black of false social assistance providers.
After three days of fraud trials, Hector Lopez Ramos and Beatriz Adriana Guerrero Munoz pleaded guilty last May to a reduced employment chief of counterfeit documents, that is to say tax readings, against the government of Quebec. This chief was filed by summary declaration, therefore of less gravity.
Last week, at the Montreal Palace of Justice, the two offenders received their sentence, the fruit of a joint recommendation from lawyers. Hector Lopez Ramos received 18 months suspended prison sentence, two years of probation and 100 hours of community work (TC). Beatriz Adriana Guerrero Munoz was sentenced to 10 months in prison at home and 80 hours of TC.
Photo Patrick Sanfaçon, La Presse Archives
Beatriz Adriana Guerrero Munoz
Their co -accused, Hector Hair Rodriguez Contreras, who pleaded guilty, last spring, of having defrauded the governments of Quebec and Canada as part of the same ploy, is expected to receive his sentence next September.
Photo Martin Chamberland, La Presse Archives
Hector Hair Rodriguez Contreras
The press revealed in 2021 that this criminal network was suspected of being behind the “most important fraud ever committed” against the Ministry of Labor and Social Solidarity. According to an expert, governments lost $ 635,000 in this fraudulent scheme.
Between 2016 and 2019, the three delinquents carried out a well -established operation, through several staff investment agencies. They hired more than 400 providers from the last resort financial aid and made them work in black for food producers, among others.
They used several stratagems to blur the tax authorities: they did not produce tax statements, workers were paid in cash and some of them appeared under a false name, because they did not have a work permit.
Hector Lopez Ramos and Hector Hair Rodriguez against chose project donors who made few checks and transmitted the government for false information. Beatriz Adriana Guerrero Munoz helped the two men.
Me Geneviève Bélanger and Me Émilie Robert represented the public prosecutor. Me Martin Subak and Me Mathieu Rondeau-Pissant defended the two accused.
