display

It was supposed to be a sophisticated million dollar coup, but it went completely wrong.

Before the Kiel district court, the spectacular case of a faked death in the Baltic Sea ended on Wednesday with suspended sentences for a married couple.

A 53-year-old man and his wife wanted to swindle a good four million euros from insurance.

But only in one of 14 accused cases, the judges came to a guilty verdict on Wednesday.

In the other 13 cases, they acquitted the couple from charges of attempted insurance fraud.

In these cases, no criminal liability can be proven, because when reporting the death of the accused and submitting documents, they did not expect the payment of the sum insured immediately, says the presiding judge Carsten Tepp.

But that is a prerequisite for a conviction.

Everything else is preparatory acts that remain unpunished.

The verdict is accordingly mild: one year and nine months for the man who Tepp describes as “the planning head of the whole”, who with “high criminal energy” involved his wife of the same age and his elderly mother in the planning and implementation of the crime .

His wife received a one-year sentence, also suspended.

display

She will also get back the bail of around 14,000 euros that she left with the court as security, Tepp said.

The court refuses to pay compensation for the pre-trial detention, as requested by the defense lawyers.

"Anyone who creates such a scenario is sure to face the risk of pre-trial detention if they are discovered."

An expert found tampering on the boat

According to the court's findings, the defendant's motive was his completely desolate finances.

The man with German and American citizenship owes at least two million euros in the USA and is also heavily indebted in Germany.

He also deceived his wife about his circumstances.

She only found out in the courtroom that he was not the dentist he claimed to be, but that he received Hartz IV as a student.

The man's life was marked by constant failure, said Tepp.

“Almost everything went wrong” for him.

This obviously also applies to the planning and execution of the crime.

display

In order to get the big money and a life in luxury with Swiss accounts, the defendant wanted to fake a boat accident and his death.

He therefore summarized the insurance fraud plan in letters to his 87-year-old mother in the summer of 2018.

A first attempt to sink a boat on a tour to Denmark failed.

Then it worked on October 7, 2019.

But the police quickly became suspicious.

An expert found tampering with the found boat, which caused it to sink.

Contrary to what the defendant initially assumed, the report of death was not sufficient for the insurance companies.

They also wanted a death certificate or confirmation of his death from the local court.

But that takes at least six months.

According to the defendants, a payment - in this case of around EUR 250,000 - only appeared to be imminent with an accident insurance company.

Only in this case have they been convicted.

The wedding ring is his undoing

display

According to the plan, the accused hid for months, first with a friend in Hamburg, then in his mother's house in Schwarmstedt in Lower Saxony.

A mobile police unit finally found him there in May 2020.

Hidden behind boxes, his wedding ring flashed in the light of a flashlight.

Police lead the 53-year-old when he was arrested in May 2020

Source: dpa / M.

shepherd

With the verdict, the judges essentially followed the defense.

She had pleaded for acquittal in all cases on the grounds that the defendants had got stuck in unpunished preparatory acts.

The prosecutor, on the other hand, had demanded four years' imprisonment for the 53-year-old man and two years and ten months for his wife of the same age.

The public prosecutor's office announced a revision.