The preliminary hearing judge of the Nuoro Court, Giovanni Angelicchio, sentenced former support administrator Roberta Barabino to 7 years and 6 months, extending her previous definitive sentence of 5 years (again for embezzlement, but against other vulnerable individuals) and adding 2.5 years for the new charges involving seven elderly people, involving a total of €540,000 in misappropriated funds. The judge accepted the defense's line of argument, represented by lawyers Gianluca Sannio and Antonio Secci, who had argued that the criminal scheme was a single one. The defendant was also acquitted on some of the more than 1,300 charges related to the withdrawals and alleged embezzlement.
In the same case, the woman's husband, Antonio Francesco Coinu, was also sentenced to 4 years and 2 months for using illicit funds from the victims to renovate two B&Bs. For these charges, the Prosecutor's Office had requested a sentence of 7 years and 6 months for Barabino and 4 years and 6 months for Coinu.
Barabino, deemed by the Prosecutor's Office to be a dishonest administrator, is accused of misusing funds entrusted for the care of vulnerable individuals and using the clients' accounts as her own. This sentence therefore reinstates the already final five-year sentence, also imposed by the Nuoro preliminary hearing judge (GUP), while the other sentence, handed down to seven years and eight months, is pending before the Court of Sassari. Other proceedings are still pending before the Nuoro preliminary hearing judge.