A report of a crime was filed in July 2015 by the Legnica Municipal Office. It stated that the post-secondary beauty school for adults run by the defendant Agnieszka M. had operated in the non-public school sector since 2006. Since then, the institution had been granted the status of a public school and, under the applicable regulations, received maintenance grants in 2013–2015. Their amount depended on the actual number of female students attending classes.

In connection with an inspection planned by the Legnica Municipal Office in June 2015 to verify whether the number of students reported for calculating the grant corresponded to reality and whether the funds had been used properly, it turned out that the school was closed. This made it impossible to carry out the checks.

The municipal authorities sent letters to the school’s students to determine whether they had actually attended classes there during that period. Six women contacted the office and denied this. This led to the report of a crime.

The investigation showed that Agnieszka M. had submitted applications for grant payments 23 times, overstating the number of students in them, from September 2013 through July 2015.

As a person authorized to issue documents containing monthly information on the actual number of students and information on school attendance, the above-mentioned woman certified false information in them by overstating the number of students. Each month, she fraudulently obtained a grant ranging from more than PLN 5,200 to nearly PLN 14,000. The total amount defrauded was PLN 212,967.18.

After witnesses were questioned and the above findings were made, Agnieszka M. was charged with fraud and certifying false information in documents. She confessed to the crime, provided explanations, declared her willingness to remedy the damage and voluntarily submit to punishment. The prosecutor, finding that the aims of the punishment could be achieved without a trial, agreed with the defendant on a sentence of one year’s imprisonment, suspended conditionally for a three-year probation period. M. will also have to remedy the damage caused by the crime within three years of the judgment becoming final.

Agnieszka M. had not previously been convicted. Fraud carries a penalty of between six months and eight years’ imprisonment.

Liliana Łukasiewicz, press spokesperson for the Legnica District Prosecutor’s Office/ii