The Public Prosecutor’s Office has charged a “fake lawyer” from Braga with 141 counts of impersonating a lawyer, a profession he purportedly practiced for nearly 30 years without any qualifications to do so.
In a statement released today, the Regional Attorney General’s Office in Porto emphasized that the defendant “never completed a law degree.”
While the statement did not identify the defendant by name, a judicial source told Lusa news agency the individual is Luís Rufo.
The indictment states that from 1993 to July 2022, the defendant acted as a lawyer with an office in Braga.
“To achieve registration with the Bar Association, the defendant forged various university statements throughout his academic journey to falsely attest to the attendance and completion of multiple courses, leading to the attainment of a diploma in 1990. This diploma, which he used for Bar registration in 1992, falsely confirmed his academic qualifications,” noted the statement.
Once his registration was finalized, the defendant began practicing law in various courts and public prosecution services, engaging in procedural measures, filing motions, and carrying out all typical lawyer duties.
He was involved in at least 141 legal cases.
“The interventions attributed to the defendant are necessarily limited to the five-year statute of limitations for criminal proceedings,” the statement said.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office has requested the forfeiture to the State of the income declared by the defendant from practicing law between 2018 and 2023, amounting to over 53,000 euros.
In June 2022, the Bar Association reported filing a criminal complaint against Luís Rufo for allegedly falsifying academic certificates, which were purportedly used to obtain a law degree.
It was also announced that Luís Rufo requested the suspension of his duties and “voluntarily surrendered” his professional ID card.
The Bar Association disclosed it received a complaint targeting Luís Rufo, indicating potential falsification of the academic certificates, prompting necessary inquiries, including obtaining documentary information from the University of Coimbra and Portucalense University.
Upon completing these inquiries, the association determined there was enough evidence to warrant a criminal complaint against Rufo.
At the same time, the weekly newspaper Nascer do Sol reported that Luís Rufo had obtained his degree through fraud by forging documents from the University of Coimbra’s Faculty of Law.
The newspaper indicated that at that faculty, Rufo “only completed the course on the History of Portuguese Law.”
Subsequently, he allegedly used the certificate from that course, erasing the course name and inserting a different one in its place.
