Rodrigo Rojas Vade, former Chilean voter, in a file MARTIN BERNETTI (AFP)
Rodrigo Rojas Vade, protagonist of one of the biggest electoral frauds in Chile, was convicted this Monday of the crime of residual fraud in an abbreviated trial before the Seventh Guarantee Court of Santiago. The courts have sentenced him to 61 days in jail and a fine of around $850 for pretending to have cancer in order to receive donations that he allegedly wanted to use to cover the alleged treatment. More than $16,000 was raised. However, after the 39-year-old ex-conventionist admitted his responsibility this morning, the judge handed him a one-year suspended sentence before the gendarmerie instead of imprisonment.
Rojas Vade entered and left the courts in silence. He covered his head with a hood and wore sunglasses and a mask. After hearing the verdict, his lawyer Tomás Ramírez said: “From the first moment [Rodrigo] He indicated that he was sorry he should not have done so and from what he has informed me that is the position he is maintaining.
Rojas Vade, thin with no eyebrows or hair on his face and head, was one of the leaders of the October 2019 social outburst with a speech citing his alleged battle with mixed acute lymphocytic leukemia, one of the most serious cancers alive , based attacks blood and bone marrow. Every Friday, shirtless and wearing a mask, he went to the center of Santiago to demonstrate. He was seen holding signs that read, “I’m not fighting cancer. I’m having trouble paying for chemo. Graceful Health for Chile” or with a catheter attached to the body. He started the blog Cancer, Reality without a Filter, in which he describes how difficult it is to suffer from the disease in the South American country.
Amid the protests, he has become a symbol of inequalities in Chile’s healthcare system. As such, the former airline crew member was one of the 155 chosen to draft the proposed constitution (which was rejected last September). He used one of the 27 seats of the People’s List, a group of left-wing independents that smashed into voters by surprise. He nearly won the presidency of the panel but ultimately won one of the seven vice presidents. Thanks to its popularity, more people contributed financially to cope with the alleged illness. At one point, the scammer even organized a charity raffle for his own benefit. Contributions from people who wanted to help him reached 13,366,646 Chilean pesos, about $16,800.
Two months after he took up the challenge of drafting the proposed constitution, a journalistic investigation by the newspaper La Tercera forced him to expose his lie and resign from the Constitutional Convention, profoundly eroding trust in the drafting body. Rojas Vade apologized and said he was suffering from a stigmatizing illness which he needed the donation money to treat. It was later revealed that he suffered from syphilis, Behcet’s disease and idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura.
The Board of the Constitutional Convention sued him at the Central North Metropolitan Prosecutor’s Office for facts relating to the declaration of interest in which he filed a $33,000 debt with the bank for “chemotherapy treatment for cancer.” Rojas Vade, who had no criminal record, worked on the case. Prosecutors took into account his “impeccable prior conduct,” which reduced the sentence sought by prosecutors.
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