Dubious financial transactions via Wirecard-Bank brought a Wolfratshauser to the district court.
He is said to have worked as a "financial agent".
Wolfratshausen – Dubious money movements in his bank account brought a Wolfratshausener to court.
According to the indictment, the man is said to have made his account with the Wirecard bank available "as a financial agent for unknown perpetrators".
In a period of 13 months, a total of around 48,000 euros was credited to the account.
Responsible for 51 cases of money laundering
The 26-year-old kept a small part of the money for himself, and forwarded the rest to other accounts via Western Union.
Now the asylum seeker, who stated that he was a dishwasher, had to answer 51 money laundering cases before the Wolfratshausen district court: he was sentenced to imprisonment for one year and six months without probation.
The money is said to come from victims of so-called "love or romance scamming".
Fraudsters on the Internet use false identities, pretend love to their victims, and then rob them financially.
As a rule, the fraudster claims to have unexpectedly found himself in an emergency, from which he can only escape by paying his victims money.
The defendant does not speak at the hearing
In the present case, the individual sums between 500 and 3000 euros were paid into the accused's account between mid-November 2018 and mid-December 2019.
The accused did not comment on the allegations against him during the hearing.
When asked by the judge whether he would like to comment on the various account transactions, he shook his head.
Raised money for charities
The man was targeted by the investigators because there was a suspicion that he was involved in fraud with train tickets.
The man from Wolfratshausen also denied this, a police officer reported.
In the course of the investigation, his bank details were then queried.
In doing so, one encountered "a large number of receipts of money that suggested love scamming," the witness explained.
In fact, among the depositors there were some women who had already filed fraud reports at various police stations, explained another police officer who had asked the accused on December 17, 2019 about a corresponding report by a victim.
At the time, the man said he had made his account available to a friend in Nigeria.
He had “collected money for charitable purposes”.
It then withdrew the money itself and forwarded it via Western Union.
For the friendship service, he was "allowed to keep 50 or 60 euros," the police officer quoted from the earlier interrogation.
Lawyer requests acquittal
However, the hearing of evidence in court also revealed that investigators had not personally contacted any of the money depositors.
"It was not researched whether they had been harmed, why they had transferred the money," the police officer had to admit.
This is one of the reasons why the defense attorney did not consider it proven that "the funds came from illegal acts" and requested that his client be acquitted.
Total sentence of one year and six months
The prosecutor requested a year and two months without parole for reckless money laundering.
Judge Helmut Berger saw commercial and purposeful action by the accused as proven and pronounced a total sentence of one year and six months.
In addition, the judge ordered the confiscation of compensation in the amount of 48,000 euros.
The verdict is not yet legally binding.
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