They did Covid swabs at home, they did not send them to the laboratory and then they gave negative trout certificates

04/22/2021 7:31 PM

• Clarín.com

• Police

Updated 04/22/2021 7:31 PM

The victims paid between

$ 6,000 and $ 11,000

pesos to be tested for coronavirus in a particular way in the City of Córdoba.

The result came to them on a letterhead from a laboratory in Villa María.

It was negative

.

What they did not know is that the study had not been done.

There are

two biochemists arrested

for this scam

.

The arrests, which were known this Thursday but occurred on April 12, were ordered by the Prosecutor's Office of Instruction of District 1 Turn 5, in charge of Gustavo Dalma, within the framework of an investigation for the alleged granting of

false

certificates and certificates

of coronavirus testing.

Judicial sources reported that the accused biochemists were identified as Silvia Paola Villalón (37) and Paola Andrea Lucero (47).

They are charged with the crimes of "

fraud

and use of a false private document in a real contest."

The two professionals who shot the coronavirus negatives are not the only defendants in this case: there are

three other defendants

who remain at large.

There are three other defendants who were released.

Photo: Reuters

These are Florencia Galetto, accused as the author of the crime of "

falsification

of private document" and Javier Lujan Zapata and Rodolfo Adrián Galetto, charged as "

necessary

participants in

the crime of fraud".

The case

It all started when Pablo Rubén Gortinz, head of the “Gortniz Laboratory” in the city of Villa María, presented himself to the Economic Crimes Judicial Unit to

denounce

that they had used his company's letterhead to deliver false negative certificates of Covid-19 in the Cordoba city.

After an investigation under the directives of the prosecutor Dalma, "it was possible to identify different

victims

who paid a sum of money that ranged from $ 6,000 to $ 11,000 to carry out these tests."

The tests

were carried out in the homes

of the victims during the past year and in the context of a pandemic and an existing health emergency.

The biochemists took the samples but did not process them.

Photo: DPA

However, these studies "were

not processed

, and the defendants delivered as evidence, in some cases, false certificates from the Gortniz Laboratory: all with" negative "results.

The Prosecutor's Office continues with the investigation.

"

The number of people

who paid the defendants for the truchos certificates is still unknown, but the truth is that this cause could have consequences that not even the prosecutor himself imagines," explained the sources to assess the issue.

DD

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