Brazil Police Arrest Family Farmer Lobby Chief in Pension Fraud Probe
Carlos Lopes, head of the Conafer rural confederation, was arrested by Federal Police after nine months on the run in a multi-million-dollar pension scam.
The president of one of Brazil’s most prominent family farming advocacy groups has surrendered to authorities after spending nine months as a fugitive. Carlos Lopes, the head of the National Confederation of Family Farmers and Rural Family Entrepreneurs (Conafer), turned himself in to the Federal Police in Brasília on Wednesday night. His arrest marks a major escalation in a sweeping investigation into a multi-million-dollar fraud scheme targeting the country's most vulnerable rural pensioners.
Lopes had been on the run since November 2025, when Supreme Court Justice André Mendonça ordered his preventive arrest. The arrest is the centerpiece of "Operation No Discount" (Operação Sem Desconto), a federal probe into the systematic, unauthorized deduction of association fees from the bank accounts of retirees and pensioners. These benefits are managed by the National Social Security Institute (INSS), Brazil’s state-run pension system.
According to Federal Police investigators, Conafer allegedly orchestrated a massive falsification scheme to inflate its membership rolls. The lobby group is accused of sending field agents to rural households under the guise of routine data updates. Vulnerable elderly citizens were reportedly induced to sign documents that were later converted into fraudulent membership forms. These fake affiliations allowed Conafer to automatically siphon monthly dues directly from the victims' state pension payouts without their consent.
The scale of the alleged siphoning is immense. Federal Police reports indicate that Conafer received approximately 708.2 million reais ($125 million USD) from INSS pension deductions, subsequently diverting at least 640 million reais of those funds to shell companies and financial operators. Investigators assert that Lopes personally controlled these financial transfers and directed the political coordination of the illicit network.
In a statement, Conafer confirmed that Lopes had voluntarily presented himself to the Federal Police but maintained his innocence, stating that his surrender does not constitute an admission of guilt. The organization expressed confidence that a full judicial review will clear its president of the accusations. Lopes is currently being held in the federal prison system in Brasília as the investigation continues.