Hacker Must Provide Evidence for Plea Bargain
Jurist explains that without evidence, information only serves as a starting point for investigation
The suspicion that hacker Walter Delgatti Neto, arrested on Tuesday morning in a Federal Police operation, intends to make a plea bargain was reinforced by the revelation that a Federal Police report indicated that advisors to federal deputy Carla Zambelli (PL-SP) made Pix payments amounting to R$ 13,500 to the hacker. Delgatti reportedly authorized the Federal Police to access his bank statement to obtain the Pix transaction record.
Electronic Ballot Box Hacking
In his statement, Delgatti claimed that former President Jair Bolsonaro had asked him, during a meeting at the Alvorada Palace in 2022, whether he could hack into an electronic voting machine if he had the source code. The hacker said he was taken to the meeting by the federal deputy, who is the target of search and seizure warrants in Operation 3FA, which investigates hacking into the computerized system of the Judiciary.
Jurist and Master in Criminal Law Jacqueline Valles explains that if the hacker wants to obtain a plea bargain agreement, he will need to present evidence of the information provided to the Federal Police. “To be eligible for the sentence reduction provided by law in a plea bargain, the suspect needs to present valid evidence or indicate to investigators the path to reach that evidence. The plea bargain can only be ratified by a judge with evidence instruction,” adds the jurist.
Jacqueline mentions that if no evidence is presented, the obtained information has the strength of a regular testimony. “In this case, the information can be used in the process as a starting point for investigations and can be proven during the course of the criminal process,” she details.
According to the jurist, Law 12.850/13 establishes, in Article 4, that the judge may reduce the imprisonment sentence by up to two-thirds or replace it with restrictive rights for those who have collaborated with the investigation. “But this only happens if the collaboration results in the identification of other co-authors of a crime; if it reveals the hierarchical structure of a criminal organization and if it helps to prevent new crimes from the criminal organization, for example. In other words, it’s not enough to say anything, you need to have evidence to achieve a result,” she concludes.