Police have arrested a woman suspected of masterminding a €5 million fraud involving the sale of yachts that she did not own.Four luxury yachts were sold to unsuspecting buyers for a total of €5 million and the woman is suspected of "qualified fraud, abuse of trust, forgery of documents and money laundering,’ as she did not own the vessels nor did she have the right to sell them.
The crimes took place in Vilamoura and go back an astonishing six years to 2012, when the woman and her 45-year-old husband and co-defendant, José Silvestre, "misled four luxury boat buyers,” and ripped them off for millions. Clients include businessmen Manuel Couto Alves and João Gama Leão and sheik Mohamed Arif Ben Khadra.
The woman had done the old 'off to Brazil' trick to avoid detection but an unofficial source within the Judicial Police said that the woman, for whom an arrest warrant was pending, returned to Portugal from Brazil via Madrid earlier in February and then traveled by car to the Algarve where she was picked up.
When the couple received payments for the yachts, they created a series of fictitious transactions with non-existent companies in order to circulate the money and hang on to it without the ill-gotten gains being detected.
The police so far have managed to trace and seize about €2.7 million and £3,200, deposited in several bank accounts.
The Brazilian wife of the main suspect, José Silvestre, was released on €30,000 bail. He remains in Brazil.
