Justice files 16 cases of fraud in the PUA linking students from colleges and schools

The nominated Secretary of Justice, Domingo Emanuelli, welcomed the recommendation to close a total of 16 cases of fraud in the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program (PUA) linking high school students.

This was revealed by the official during the public hearing of the evaluation of his appointment to the Senate.

Senator Gretchen Hau asked Emanuelli specifically about the case of the investigated students at St. Ignatius College and the nominee indicated that it was a single student from that school.

“In this case he specifically re-investigated it with other prosecutors. I told them to take me not only this case (of St. Ignatius), but others and they brought 16 cases. Eight from public schools and eight from private schools. see the recommendations and I evaluated them and for the first time I tell the public that my determination will be to file with the same stick … there was no case. It is to close them, “Emanuelli expressed.

During the public hearing, Emanuelli indicated that Justice refused to prosecute over 400 such cases, referred by the Police, because they did not have enough evidence.

Previously, the director of the Bank Theft and Fraud Division at Banking Institutions of the Police, Lieutenant José Ayala, argued that the preliminary investigation pointed out that students at Colegio San Ignasi de Loiola, in San Juan, had charged about $ 12,000 illegally.

In fact, the lieutenant said, at the time, that the mothers of the minors handed out two checks to the Department of Labor for the amounts of $ 7,458 and $ 6,126, respectively.

He also detailed that the allegations of one of the minors and his mother claimed that about 30 students from St. Ignatius College allegedly requested federal assistance by placing false information on the website of the PUA.