False criminal charges happen frequently.
The law prohibits the filing of a criminal report for an act that the applicant knows has not been committed. The police recently filed a criminal complaint against woman from Ruma because she falsely reported that a large amount of money and gold jewelry, which she had previously spent trading bitcoin, had disappeared in an unspecified manner from the family home where she lives.
Such and similar cases are not rare. The police always discover people who squander money in various ways and pretend that they have been robbed. An interesting example is from Bogatić. In February, members of the MUP shed light on the alleged burglary of an apartment in this town and filed a criminal complaint against the SD for false reporting. After failing the polygraph, he admitted that he invented how he was robbed, because he spent the loan money in the bar.
SD reported to the police how the thieves broke into his house at night by breaking down the front door and stole an envelope containing 120,000 dinars from the table in the room, and then escaped through the window (two days earlier he had withdrawn the money from the bank).
“I woke up at three in the morning to go to the toilet and when I saw the door broken, the window open and the money gone, I almost collapsed,” SD told the police. The inspectors put a lot of effort into finding the alleged thieves, and the security cameras on the nearby houses were not of much use because of the thick fog that night. They took prints from the doors and windows and searched for what turned out to be non-existent thieves.
The police officers also visited the places where the “victim” stayed and questioned the people with whom he was in contact. They soon found out that SD was in a bar on the “fatal evening” where he forgot his house keys. Those who were in the tavern with him that night, they confirmed that SD had and spent a lot of money on booze and music. At that time, the police suspected that the robbery had not happened at all. SD then failed the polygraph and admitted that he invented the robbery.
Our interlocutor from the police, who has experience with such cases, says that fake robberies are most often reported by people who gamble or owe money. “In their moments of no way out, they don’t think about the consequences of falsely reporting a crime. Many are creative in describing fake robberies and explain in detail and vividly how their money disappeared, as if they themselves believe in that imaginary scenario.“, says our interlocutor.
It happened that some people falsely reported other people in order to harm them in that way. There were also cases where they “deceived” the state authorities that a criminal offense had been committed, or they framed others as the perpetrator of a criminal offense that they had committed themselves. Also, some individuals sacrificed themselves by accepting the guilt for a certain criminal act, in order to remove it from their neighbor.
Because of all this, the law prohibits the filing of a criminal report for an act that the applicant knows has not been committed, and such false reports represent a special criminal offense and are punishable by a fine or from three months to three years in prison.
(WORLD/Political)