A notary and a lawyer are the main culprits in a massive real estate scam with 100 victims.

BarcelonaLawyer Francesc Comitre has accepted a four-year and seven-month prison sentence After admitting to leading a network that amassed over a hundred real estate scams, the perpetrators targeted people with financial difficulties, offering them loans to help with their debts. However, what the victims unknowingly signed was the sale of their homes at a price far below market value. The entire scheme was legally formalized, making the participation of notary Enrique Peña crucial. Peña accepted a three-year and two-month prison sentence and will be permanently barred from practicing law. A total of 17 people were involved between 2009 and 2015. Three died before the trial began this Monday, and the other 14 confessed to the fraud and reached an agreement with the prosecution, resulting in reduced sentences. Two of the victims, a mother and daughter, each owned 50% of an apartment on Calle Borrell in Barcelona. They were paying €1,350 a month on their mortgage, a sum that became difficult to manage during a time of financial hardship. On the recommendation of acquaintances, they contacted a loan company run by Comitre and another of the defendants. The company concealed from the victims that the apartment's value at that time was around half a million euros, and they agreed that a third defendant would buy it for €168,300, the same amount they still owed on their mortgage. In addition, the mother would receive a lifetime annuity of €500 and could continue living there until her death with a life estate. The agreement, ratified by notary Enrique Peña, included no guarantees in case the payments were not made. The final document set the sale price of the apartment at €150,000 and, instead of the lifetime annuity promised to the woman, stipulated that she would have to pay the new owner €350 a month to continue living in the apartment. A few days later, the defendant resold the apartment to a fourth defendant for €450,000 without ever mentioning the lifetime usufruct that had been promised to the woman. The victims even paid rent to this fourth defendant for a time under threat of eviction.

Compensation pending

With varying details in each case, the scam was repeated in dozens of towns in the Barcelona area. The agreement reached between the Public Prosecutor's Office and the private prosecution brought by the Notarial Association of Catalonia with the defendants' lawyers does not include the compensation they will have to pay to the victims, which will be debated starting Tuesday at the trial. For now, the victims have requested that all deeds be annulled and the companies involved in the sales be dissolved, but they also pointed out that some of the properties are currently occupied by people who purchased them in good faith.

Before Monday's agreement, Francisco Comitre faced a sentence of more than twenty years. Legal sources indicate that he will have to serve the four years and seven months he accepted today for fraud, forgery, money laundering, and organized crime. The ruling will also clarify whether notary Enrique Peña, who received a three-year and two-month sentence for fraud, forgery, and money laundering, will ultimately be imprisoned. Before the plea agreement, he faced nearly 15 years in prison.