It was a brazen real estate fraud that two brothers from a large Arab family in Berlin, a businessman and a lawyer, had come up with.
The Berlin Regional Court imposed several years' imprisonment on the defendants on Monday.
The two brothers Rabih and Mohamad A.-C.
from a well-known "clan family" were sentenced to four years and ten months' imprisonment.
The businessman received six years and nine months, the lawyer three and a half years.
According to the court, the defendants had an apartment building in Berlin-Friedrichshain transferred to them by means of forged sales documents in order to sell it at a profit.
They looked for a debt-free property belonging to an elderly couple, founded a GmbH with the name of the property, drew up a purchase agreement and had it notarized.
The convicted attorney appeared as the alleged representative of the owners.
Two straw people then presented themselves to another notary with forged ID cards as allegedly willing owners.
The defendants were able to deceive the officials of the land registry with the false, but notarized purchase documents.
The unsuspecting owners, both now 80 years old, only became aware of the loss of their property when a fire insurance company announced that their insurance had been canceled.
In the opinion of the court, the couple suffered damage of at least six million euros.
Only in the course of a protracted legal dispute, which according to their statements cost the owners a six-figure sum, were they re-entered as owners in the land register after a year and a half.
The two brothers and the merchant confessed.
The verdict is not yet legally binding.