It is the total impunity in Portugal! These countless crooks have carte blanche to steal from anyone at any time. The case presented here is frighteningly the same as what happened to me, practically the only difference is the object of purchase, in this case it was a property, a house, and in my case it was an industrial machine, but the modus operandi is frighteningly the same throughout! It was very difficult for me to read this news!
In Portugal, when you advance money to someone to pay for a product or service, especially large amounts, you always run a huge, extremely huge risk that your money could be stolen, and when that happens, you will NEVER get it back, because the Portuguese authorities, all of them, don’t give a damn about the victims. The Portuguese authorities are a shameless farce, either because they are totally corrupt or because they are totally incompetent.
And if you have no other choice than to at least try to take justice into your own hands, not necessarily violently, in order to recover your stolen valuables, as you have every right to do, given that the Portuguese authorities do not act or want to know about you for nothing, so you are always on your own in Portugal. Only that in this case these bastards will be very quick to “end” your life in any way possible to protect the criminal. Portugal is a truly disgusting, dictatorial and despicable country that shouldn’t even exist! Run away or never go there! Portugal can (and will) destroy your life in the blink of an eye.
These endless cases of fraud in the purchase of houses (or anything else really) happen constantly and with values that could often be much higher, in the order of 300 thousand euros upwards without limit, perpetrated by career criminals who open and close dozens or even hundreds of different fraudulent companies over a lifetime with impunity. Very unfortunately, the Portuguese media is generally very silent in relation to everything that goes wrong and extremely wrong in that miserable country, which is why I was unable to find more translatable cases, because many other cases I found were only reproduced on TV/web video, but not in writing. Not to mention the overwhelming majority of crimes committed that will never come to light.
Anyway, at the end of this article I have left some very valuable links to some very disturbing videos on YouTube about real estate millionaire scams, which are unfortunately so common in Portugal and which always end up the same way for the victims, i.e. the stolen victims NEVER see their money again (regardless of the amount stolen), because the justice in Portugal blatantly protects criminals and the corrupt, as the Portuguese “justice” itself is, for a fact, also made up of criminals and criminally incompetent civil servants.
The following article is a translation (mostly MT). You can find the link to the original website at the end of it.
Several families paid thousands of dollars for homes that were never built. Those responsible for building these homes are accused of defrauding dozens of customers, but they continue to open new companies.
Paula Queiroz was pregnant when she signed the contract to build the new house.
“My son is 5 years old and still doesn’t have a room of his own. We are in a rented apartment that is too small for our needs because we have no way to move”,
she tells Sábado, the young woman from Coimbra.
The couple had been caught “in what appears to be a pyramid scheme that will have injured dozens of people across the country, leading to criminal charges for fraud and falsification of documents.
They’ve already paid 60,000 euros for a house that doesn’t exist,” she says.
The company in question is Lumobras, also known as Vertente Tranquila, which operates in the market under the commercial name of Casa Modelar, sometimes called Casa Modular.
In 2017, young people from Coimbra signed a contract for the supply of a 3-bedroom house in containers, worth 90 thousand euros, to be delivered in six months. The building permit arrived at the beginning of 2020, but in the years that followed, the work made little progress. “For months they didn’t do anything, we always insisted”, says the woman. “Most of the time, they didn’t answer the phone. But when we did, João Cardoso [owner and manager of the company] was very cordial and always found excuses.” And she continues: “Since we had already given so much money, we wanted to believe in our dream.”
After waiting for so long, they ended up revoking the contract
and were never able to recover the money
they were claiming for the work that had not been done. However, they discovered that the company had forged the civil engineer’s signature on the terms of responsibility and in the work book.
“The engineer had not worked for the company for about a year and a half, and his signatures were on the workbook,” Paula mentions.
Paula and her husband filed a criminal complaint for fraud and became aware of several identical cases. The same article reports that the company obtains new contracts that it is unable to fulfill in order to finance older works.
According to Sábado, who interviewed the aforementioned engineer, who asked not to be identified, but confirmed that he had worked at Lumobras until 2020. “He later discovered that, after leaving the company, his signature had been forged in the work books of several clients. He adds that he filed a criminal complaint and that the investigation is pending at the DIAP in Coimbra”, describes the message.
Paula and her husband filed a criminal complaint for fraud and became aware of several identical cases. The same article reports that the company receives new contracts that it cannot fulfill in order to finance older works.
“We are homeless, without money, with a loan from the bank, paying two rents, the house where we currently live and the loan we have from the bank,” she says.
They turned the work over to a new contractor, but were unsure if they would be able to finance the project through to completion.
The couple is living in difficult times, while the contractor who left them in trouble shows a relaxed life. “João drives around in a new car, and I wonder if it is with our money,” she says, indignant.
In 2016, “the company was called Rendisphera. The managing partner was Paulo Albuquerque Ferreira, who in 2017 transferred the Casa Modelar brand to a new company, Vertente Tranquila. In 2019, the businessman sold the company to general construction manager João Cardoso, his right-hand man, who has now renamed it Lumobras,” Sábado explains.
Catarina Bernardes worked at Lumobras for a year and a half as an electrician. She left in July 2021 for non-payment. On Saturday, she guarantees that during that time she never saw a completely finished work. “The clients paid and when it was time to move on to the next phase, he had diverted the money to another project,” she concludes.
Links to YouTube videos about other real estate scams in Portugal
Sure, these videos are spoken in Portuguese, but thankfully technology comes to our rescue and it is now possible to select the automatic subtitle translator for your preferred language.
Instructions: Bottom right corner of the video » first click CC » then Settings » then Subtitles/CC » then Auto-translate (and select your language). It’s not perfect, but it gives the picture.
(Click on the thumbnails to watch them on YouTube)
A country where criminals and the powerful are systematically protected to the detriment of victims and its citizens is the definition of a dictatorship, which is why Portugal should leave the EU.
PORTUGAL ROBBED ME €130.000 EUR AND SIX YEARS OF MY LIFE!
Your comments are most welcome and appreciated, so please feel free to leave your comments at the bottom of this page.
I had an civil case in Portugal. Needed a translator. I had to pay upfront. The date was three times postponed and finally the whole case was dimissed and I have to start a new procedure. I asked my money back from the court which I paid for translation. It has been more then a year and still nothing. I do not count on it anylonger. Btw, the same with TAP airlines, refund during Covid. I lost that money too. Portuguese are the most unreliable people I have ever met and they do not have any ethics or pride to try to do things in an honest way. My sincere advice ; stay away from Portugal.
That’s how all of Portugal works, starting with the state of course! It’s all a bunch of (legal) crooks and thieves! It’s in their DNA. There are honest people, but they’re so rare you can’t find them (and even if you do, they’re not much help in the midst of all the rottenness that exists in Portugal).
Exactly, stay far away from that tyrannical shithole that tries to pretend to be a real country, if you don’t want to see your lives destroyed, by anything, and with any value at all. I just want to warn and help the world about the very real danger that Portugal poses to your lives! Portugal is a utter fraud!
Another Lady’s life destroyed by PoortugalScum.
https://algarvedailynews.com/news/23418-land-grabbing-in-the-algarve
The Portuguese are so quick to complain about property values going up and then attacking and terrorising foreigners. Yet they are not smart enough to realise that the economy is improving, businesses are generating more income, dilapidated buildings and streets are being repaired etc. They just want to take the EU’s money and continue their miserable lives like indulgent sloths and leeches.
I am alarmed at all these horror stories of the crooked system in Portugal. I am moving to the Azores Islands. Does anyone know if it’s the same or better there?
My friend,
I’m sorry to say, but IMO there’s no reason for it to be any different, since the Azores are also Portugal, the same country, the same corrupt system full of very serious flaws.
The Azores are very beautiful, as is almost all of Portugal in terms of nature. Portugal’s only problem is really the Portuguese, the overwhelming majority of whom are dishonest people.
My advice is to never trust anyone in Portugal with any money that you can’t afford to be stolen, otherwise you’ll never see your money again. You can’t trust appearances either, in Portugal they don’t mean anything, there are many scams in Portugal with the backing of national banks and the state itself.
Enjoy the beauty of the Azores but hold on tight to your money.
Look at this case, they were swindled out of 10 million euros, but it could just as easily have been 100, 1000 million euros. Terrifying!!
https://poortugalscum.com/british-presenters-lose-ten-million-euros-on-a-dream-villa-in-portugal…
Best wishes.