Despite being accused of the crimes of qualified theft and forgery of documents, the short testimonies of three of the five defendants of the “Hyper Gang”, who began to be tried on Monday at the Beja Court, were intended to avoid a substantial change in the facts that could incriminate them in a more serious way.
Even though they all live in a neighborhood in a parish in Lisbon,, the explanations given to the Panel of Judges (CJ) and the Public Prosecutor, were intended to demonstrate that none of the thefts were planned in advance and that they were never together at the crime scenes.
Of the five individuals, four Portuguese and one Brazilian, Sandro, L., of 29 year old, who has escaped justice, did not attend the trial, this despite his defender, having informed the president of the CJ that “my client is on the way”. At the end of the session, an arrest warrant was issued to take the defendant to the next trial session..
The first to be heard was Wilker C., of 26 year old, who justified his presence in Beja with the fact that “he came to the girls with the others”, in turn Lucas R., of 23 year old, he assured that “we came to shop in Alentejo because it is cheaper here”, ending Pedro R., of 34 year old, for justifying that “it was the economic difficulties of the moment and I regret it”, sustained.
The expression of the last of the defendants led the president of the Collective to remind the defendant that: “that would have been what I said in previous cases, because your criminal record has 39 pages", finished.
John M., of 25 year old, considered the leader of the group, which in police circles is also known as the “Joãozinho Gang”, the only one of the defendants still in pre-trial detention, kept silent. Even though we traveled together, for committing various thefts, the defendants never admitted that they planned the crimes, nor to whom they were going to sell the products they stole.
However, the testimonies of the PSP Beja Criminal Investigation agents involved in the arrests and the images extracted from the video surveillance cameras of the two surfaces, put the entire group into joint efforts to promote theft.
The five defendants, who worked in groups within hypermarkets, are being tried for committing five qualified crimes, four for theft and one for forgery of documents, facts committed between 11 January and 11 February 2023, in commercial areas in Évora and Beja.
The modus operandi was to steal alarm deactivators from products, “neutralize” barcodes as if they were paid. One was monitoring the space, two simulated an argument between them, attracting the attention of security guards, while the others left the establishment with the products, which they transported to a vehicle parked close to the location of the theft.
Of the thefts committed and for which they are being tried, brought alcoholic drinks, food products and mobile phones worth 10.537,57 euros, having been detained by PSP agents from Beja, in the last of two thefts carried out in this city, when they were still inside the Modelo store, in the city's Ratail Park.
Some of the defendants have already been sentenced to effective prison sentences, have pending processes underway in Tomar, Montemor-o-Novo, Cascais and Vila Franca de Xira, and are also suspected of more than three dozen thefts committed since January 2022, in the Greater Lisbon area and in the Algarve.
Teixeira Correia
(journalist)
