How an ATM Thief’s Wife Escaped From Prison, Charged With “Tuning” With Loot Money

Arad prosecutors sent to court, in 2019, five people accused of blowing up a BCR ATM, stealing more than 420,000 lei. The robbers were also charged with attempted robbery, after trying to blow up a Transilvania Bank, but the robbery failed.

The investigation revealed that the thieves “scanned” other ATMs in Bihor and Argeş who wanted to fly, but gave up after realizing they were being pursued by the police. However, before being caught, two of the thieves managed to steal 420,000 lei by blowing up a BCR ATM in Arad.

After the trial, tried in the first instance in the Court of Arad, the leader of the gang, Ioan Flavius ​​Ritan, received eight years in prison and his accomplices between three and six years in prison. Ritan’s wife was also sentenced by the Arad Court to three years in prison for complicity.

The woman was accused of being present when Ritan and one of her accomplices shared the money stolen from the BCR ATM thrown into the air, and then “used the money for vacations, trips, trips, cosmetic surgery in their personal interest.”

Claudia Ritan was also accused of accompanying her husband on “pilgrimages” in preparation for robberies that did not take place, informing the other accomplices at Ritan’s request. In fact, the man himself said of his wife: „She knew what she was doing, she was my secretary, through her communication with others from time to time. “.

The woman, acquitted in the Court of Appeal

Judges at the Timişoara Court of Appeal found the gang leader’s wife, accused of complicity in aggravated robbery, not guilty. The judges pointed out that “the defendant’s statement, on the one hand, is too vague in content and is not temporarily located in the criminal activity, and on the other hand, it is not corroborated with any other evidence in the case to establish guilt. accused “.

The defendant admitted in the criminal investigation stage that his wife had knowledge of what he was doing, but this aspect is not a moral complicity in the absence of other evidence that supports the accusation that the defendant supported and effectively strengthened the criminal decision of his husband. or that he made promises to her before committing the facts that she would support him in everything he did and would hide the money from the crimes and hide the criminal bodies used by the accused ”, is also shown in the acquittal of the accused woman of complicity in qualified robbery.

The judges of the Timişoara Court of Appeals also demonstrated that “the defendant’s spending of the money stolen by her husband is not an act of complicity, being an act after the consumption of crimes, in addition to participating in the counting of money or warning to the defendants Borodi and Borbilău, and in the absence of other evidence on their participation before or at the same time in the commission of the crimes, they do not constitute proof of the guilt of the accused ”.

The Timişoara Court of Appeal also held that “there is no evidence in the file (nor has it been expressly indicated by the prosecutor or the first instance) from which it can be inferred that the accused supported the criminal activity of the husband “.

“The fact that, after committing the crimes, he hid and spent the stolen money, helped to hide the bodies of the crimes, are not acts of moral complicity, but crimes of cover-up, favoritism that is not punished by being the wife of the accused. Basically, these accusations of moral complicity are simple assumptions of the accusation, not supported by evidence, and the subsequent actions of concealment and favoritism of the accused must be seen in terms of her status as the accused’s wife, this being the reason for impunity. in the judgment of the Timişoara Court of Appeal, which is final.

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