A administrative employee of the Government of Mendoza was farewell last week and faces a criminal complaint for his participation in a millionaire fraudwhich was possible by having direct intervention in the database of “Linked“, created to promote employment opportunities. With the help of 31 accomplices outside the State, put together a plan to keep millions of pesos from the labor program that depends on the Ministry of Production, and did so for 4 months, diverting around $26 million in that period, without being detected by any responsible official.
Everything broke out last week, but the Ministry of Production did not make the case public. As reconstructed by postthe fired employee, who will be the “brain” of this fraud against the State, is Valentina Cceresa young woman of barely 20 years old who joined the Enlazados program as an administrator at the beginning of 2023. Tuesday April 30, with a public notary, they communicated the dismissal and witnesses to the situation stated that the woman did not show signs of surprise nor did she resist the measure that had been taken against her.
Among the 31 accomplices who facilitated the diversion of some $26 million is Cceres’ boyfriend, Germán Valdeomillos, only 19 years old, who also worked in Enlazados, although he would have resigned before the maneuver was detected. Regarding the latter, an unofficial source told this newspaper that the tip of the ball was a couple of bank transfers between Cceres and Valdeomillos, for several million pesos. Those movements they would have been “observed“by the banks and AFIP, so the employers would have been investigated. According to this theory, it was thus that the Ministry of Production put the magnifying glass on Cáceres and discovered the fraud.
Valentina Cceres (20), the fired employee, and her boyfriend, Germán Valdeomillos (19), also involved in the fraud.
With this information, the Ministry of Production of Mendoza was consulted about what happened, and the person responsible for the Enlazado program, Emilce Vega Espinoza, confirmed the fraud and the dismissal of an administrative employee whom he avoided identifying. However, he denied that the alarms had “jumped” on the side of the AFIP and stated that it was the internal controls that made it possible to detect the scam. Likewise, he confirmed that “surely in the next few hours” the Legal Affairs Directorate will make a criminal complaint before the Economic Crimes Prosecutor’s Office.
Step by step: how they diverted $26 million
To understand how $26 million was diverted, you must first understand how the Enlazados program works. Basically, through this program, the Government collaborates with companies that meet certain requirements paying part of the salary of new employees for 4 months. This aid, which is equivalent to the minimum living and mobile wage, goes directly to the worker’s CBU. Therefore, fraud required the complicity of real people who would receive the money.
According to what they said from the Ministry of Production, the alarm went off because at the end of the month of April drew attention one company that had added 31 new employees, something atypical in the midst of the current economic crisis. Upon digging a little further, they discovered that she was a shell company: Does not exist. Automatically, they verified in the system which Enlazados employee had uploaded the data to the system and the name of the employee “popped” there. the responsible one.
See more: Some 21 thousand people found employment through the Enlazados program
The next step was check the girl’s “history” on the server and, from there, they were able to reconstruct how it had beentaken advantage of a “window” of the system during the previous four months (December, January, February and March) to divert nearly $26 million.
From the Enlazados program they told post that, every month, between the control date and the settlement of salariesthe woman entered the system and included 31 CBU in different companies, randomly. One day later, then that the money was deposited in each account, I logged back into the system and deleted the data.. This irregularity was not detected for four months, and the alarm was only activated when the young woman went further and tried to group the 31 accomplices into a single company that, furthermore, did not exist.
The Minister of Production, Rodolfo Vargas Arizu (center), and the person in charge of Enlazados, Emilce Vega Espinoza (right), who confirmed the fraud and anticipated that a criminal complaint is imminent.
For example: if the control was on the 28th and the payments were made on the 29th, the woman entered the system on the night of the 28th, included the names of her accomplices in companies, at random, and deleted them on the 29th after They had deposited the money. So, For four months I managed to get 31 people to earn a minimum living and mobile wage without working.. Taking into account the amount of the SMVM until last month, the number of months and the number of people who received the money, The fraud amounted to about $26,000,000.
Now it will be the responsibility of the Economic Crimes Prosecutor, Juan Ticheli, to verify the responsibility of each of the 32 involved: Cceres and the 31 people to whom the money was deposited.
