Two men and a woman, a Brazilian and a Portuguese woman, were arrested in the Lisbon area on Monday morning by a special team of the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF), which specializes in the execution of international arrest warrants.
The group has been a refugee in our country for several months, hiding from an arrest warrant issued by the Brazilian federal court for the first judicial interrogation.
The scam is related to the company “Pineal Marketing Unipessoal”, established in January 2022 in Brazil, but with offices on Rua Joshua Benoliel in Lisbon.
According to Brazilian justice, this firm was created for the sole purpose of raising investments for a fictitious business on the stock exchange.
The scheme resulted in the hiring of an as yet undetermined number of people to work in “call centers”.
Unaware of the scope of the group’s activities, the recruiters set themselves the task of attracting investors who were invited to advance their economy with promises of big profits.
There are records of hundreds of victims in Portugal and Brazil, some of them left in poverty.
The four detainees are charged with commercial electronic fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and embezzlement.
They are due to be present on Tuesday at the Lisbon Court for enforcement measures to extradite the suspects to Brazil.