Milton Neves obtains arrest of former employee in court and compensation of R$ 860 thousand after scams

Journalist Milton Neves, 72, achieved a victory in court after reporting that he had suffered scams and financial theft by a former employee, who worked as a trusted man for 18 years.

Neves claimed that he had lost more than R$17 million from his bank accounts. However, he managed to prove through notes the embezzlement of more than R$860 thousand. Thus, in the first instance, the São Paulo Court of Justice sentenced this former employee to reimburse this amount in addition to semi-open imprisonment for a period of five years and two months. There is an appeal.

According to information contained in the process, the man had access to all of Neves’ accounts and passwords and was responsible for paying bills and closing agreements with companies and services. The journalist used to sign documents without reading them, because he had full trust in his then manager. A fellow countryman from the city of Muzambinho (MG), the employee was sponsored by Neves at a certain point in his life.

However, these services were paid for with cold or overpriced bills, and the larger amount was diverted to his accounts. This loss was evident through receipts, statements and the confession of another person who helped the employee to carry out these actions.

O F5 he was unable to speak to the defendant’s lawyer, but the defense states in the process that the additional amounts that appeared came from other services requested from him by Neves, but which had not been recorded in invoices. And that this failure to issue notes would not have occurred due to bad faith. The TJSP did not accept this defense, and the fact that Milton Neves was over 60 years old was an aggravating factor.

One of the excerpts from judge Marcos Vieira de Morais’ decision states that there is abundant documentary evidence verifying the payments made by Neves’ company directly to a company in the accused’s name.

“There is no doubt that the accused, financial director and trusted man of the victim Milton Neves, took advantage of the access he had to the company’s bank accounts to make payments on ‘cold’ invoices, issued with the aim of masking the deviations. what he did”, says another part of the process. Lawyer defending Neves, Sergei Cobra Arbex states that he cannot comment, but that the decision “was fair”.

In 2022, after filing the lawsuit, Milton admitted to the program Melhor da Tarde (Band) that he received a lot of money for his work as a TV communicator, but did not pay much attention to the employee’s accountability. “I simply signed the notes. Many times, on the 5th or 20th, it was R$300,000 to pay a tax or a bill. I signed it without looking. I trusted the guy and he was stealing from me all these years”, commented Milton at the time .