At the beginning of the trial, the 42-year-old woman took the lead in the case, but confirmed the complicity of her 50-year-old husband.

"I wanted to stop but I didn't know how," said the woman.

The couple had divorced but meanwhile reconciled, allegedly in the name of the health and happiness of a 9-year-old daughter, who has health problems.

In view of the full admission of the facts, the court dismissed the hearing of the witnesses.

In the final allegations, the Public Ministry (MP) asked for the conviction of the defendants for four crimes of tax fraud against the SS and two crimes of computer fraud.

However, the MP asked the court to take into account the confession and the fact that the couple had a daughter with health problems.

The defense lawyer asked for a suspended sentence, conditional on full payment to SS of the amount wrongly received.

The reading of the judgment was scheduled for June 2.

According to the prosecution, the couple forged medical statements and birth certificates, which they presented to the SS services and which led this body to allocate support, namely family allowance, prenatal allowance, parental allowance and social insertion income.

The accusation says that the defendants, "in common of efforts and intentions, engendered and implemented a fraudulent scheme, aiming to deceive the Services of the Braga District Center of the Social Security Institute, in order to unduly receive patrimonial assignments".

For this purpose, “alleged children who never existed” were registered with the SS.

In July 2011, they were asked to assign an SS identification number to one of the “daughters” they invented.

In November 2012, they repeated the procedure, this time for alleged triplets.

They presented medical certificates of pregnancy, declarations from the Braga Hospital and forged birth certificates, thus obtaining that the SS attributed them the normal support resulting from the birth of children.

Support was granted until mid-2019.

At the same time, the defendants also tried to receive support for their grandchildren, after having abusively accessed the SS ‘online’ platform with the password of the children's father.

The Public Prosecutor's Office asks that the defendants be ordered to jointly pay the State the amount of 37,658 euros, "which corresponds to the advantage of the criminal activity" developed by them.