Porto || For the first time ever in Portugal, a man is facing jail time for reporting a fake accident to emergency number 112. The “accident” was a “car crash on the A24” (between Viseu and Chaves) and involved the man as the only “survivor” and five “dead co-workers”.
According to Porto’s Court of Appeal, Carlos Arnaldo Ribeiro did it as a “cry for attention” from his wife who was divorcing him at the time. It all happened on February 1, 2012.
In his first phone call, Ribeiro said he had fallen from a cliff in his company car, was trapped inside the vehicle and couldn’t see where he was due to thick fog. He also said that the “five passengers” that were with him at the time had “died”.
Emergency services were quickly dispatched to the area.
Authorities only realised that the accident was a sham when Ribeiro made another desperate call an hour later asking them to call his wife.
It was his wife who told the authorities that the man was unemployed and couldn’t have been coming home from work in a “company car”.
By then, eight GNR patrol cars, one helicopter and a number of fire engines were out looking for the “victims”.
The man had first been sentenced to pay a €550 fine, but the Public Prosecutor’s office appealed against the decision. Ribeiro now faces three months in prison, as well as a €398 fine to cover the fuel used by GNR police while searching for him.
