A woman aged 58 from Chisinau was sentenced to eight years in jail for swindling people out of large amounts of money by cheating and breach of trust, IPN reports.

Prosecutors established that in 2003 – 2009, the culprit, posing as an investor running a number of businesses, obtained over 17 million lei from 24 persons in loans. When the woman got the money, she disappeared and the victims ascertained that she didn’t own the property that she pledged when the lending contracts were signed.

Besides servicing time in prison, the woman will also have to pay damages to the victims. The sentence is not yet definitive.