A fraud worth 124 million pesos began to be investigated by the Punta Arenas Prosecutor’s Office by virtue of a criminal complaint filed by the Patagonia Factoring company against the former head of the local office and 8 other people.
The defendants face charges of alleged perpetrators of the crimes of fraud, forgery and use of public and private commercial instruments, identity theft, misappropriation of money, to the detriment of Patagonia Factoring.
The main defendant is Walter Agurto, who left the company in mid-May, after having worked primarily as a commercial executive since 2018, and since April 2021 as office manager of the Punta Arenas branch, who is accused of accuses “of abusing the trust placed, having full knowledge of the way of working, the controls, internal processes and work modalities of the company.” The criminal presentation adds that “in order to defraud the company, deceive and obtain assets from it, and profit for its own benefit, a mechanism was created that allowed it to get Patagonia Factoring SA, believing it to be against true commercial factoring operations, transferred sums of money to various accounts of its co-participants and which were taken advantage of by the defendants, the company being harmed in the approximate sum of $124,900,000, all of this in this city, only for operations that are completely pending payment.” It is estimated that this fraudulent system was preliminarily started in July 2023 and that current operations were recorded in May 2024.
As established in the legal presentation, the main defendant, having access to the client portfolio of Patagonia Factoring SA, “presented operations that associated clients of the company, with data from third parties who had no knowledge of or relationship with said client, that is, false operations, incorporating false documents, stolen and/or adulterated checks, false invoices, false signatures, false vehicle sales contracts, transfer mandates with forged signatures of clients and ministers of faith, and false stamps or stamps extracted from other legal documents related to notaries of Punta Arenas.”
It is noted that “once the background information was entered into the commercial system of Patagonia Factoring SA with its first validation and said background information was defended against the reviews of risk personnel, by presenting background information that appeared valid, the operation was approved. to later proceed to request the transfer of the value of the operation to current accounts that he had previously incorporated into the co system.“More authorized by the client and with whose owners it was previously agreed and colluded, owners who correspond to the other defendants in this case.”
In the complaint sponsored by lawyer Alejandra Guevara, who acting for her client Luis Silva Coronado, representative of Patagonia Factoring SA, a series of diligence is requested from the PDI to ensure the purposes of the procedure.
How does it work
“factoring”
Factoring is a form of financing for companies that need immediate liquidity by transferring their invoices receivable to a financial company, known as a factor, which is responsible for collecting invoices from the company’s clients and, in exchange, pays the company an amount that is usually less than the total value of the invoices.
According to the Financial Market Commission, this consists of a business that “transfers the future collection service of existing credits and invoices in its favor and in exchange immediately obtains the money that relates to these operations, with a discount or percentage. of minimum interest.”
This is a generally faster and easier way to obtain working capital, compared to a bank loan. This relationship involves factoring companies, companies seeking financing (known as “clients”) and debtors, that is, clients who have accounts payable to their supplier, whether due or on credit.
