Crime of false statements: if they are included in an official document, whoever makes the scheme can be punished with 2 years in prison.
A driver of a vehicle committed a road traffic offence. It was traveling at a speed of 102 km/h in a maximum speed zone of 50 km/h. There was a radar there, it was caught.
It was a vehicle from a funeral home, which was notified; but the identification that reached the National Authority for Road Safety (ANSR) was that of a young man… who had .
The company gave ANSR the documents of a person whose funeral had been handled by the agency itself. He purposely changed the driver’s identification to avoid the fine.
It is a well-known practice, but is growing: giving someone else’s name to escape the fine. It is driver identification fraud. An identity is given that is not that of the person driving.
Warns that the law is clear about providing incorrect data: whenever an offense is committed, the vehicle owner is obliged to identify who was driving the vehicle at the time of the offense.
The law presumes that, if the owner did not identify the driver, the owner was the one driving.
When receiving the fine, the owner has, at most, 15 dias to identify the driver – if it was not the driver; You must send complete details so that the driver can be notified.
But this is where the maneuver often comes in: When the fine arrives, someone else is designated as responsible.
Of course it has to be someone who has a driving license. And, in principle, there is someone available to participate in this scheme.
But there are also cases where the driver doesn’t even know which is being mentioned in this scam.
There are consequences
There is no doubt: anyone who commits this type of scheme incurs criminal liability. It’s a crime.
Afterwards, it depends on what was done: if it was just a wrong name, if it involved documents… But there is, at least, a crime of false statements.
This crime may be punished with a new fine, or imprisonment for up to two yearsif the false statements appear in an official document.
ANSR says it has no data on this scheme.
