The district court of Cologne has sentenced a clerk from Leverkusen to eight years in prison for repeatedly cheating on a rich couple. He was convicted in more than 20 cases of fraud, and he also filed a false affidavit.
His Leverkusen-based family has long been "committed to committing scams on a grand scale," the judge said. Two accomplices were sentenced to a little more than a year for money laundering, one of them on probation. A fourth defendant has to perform one hundred social hours.
According to the verdict, the head of the family had gained the trust of a wealthy married couple and betrayed it by more than 900,000 euros. He pretended to be the offspring of a wealthy US-Jewish family with a good construction industry and invited the couple on expensive trips again and again.
Despite his alleged wealth, the fraudster repeatedly asked his victims for large sums of money. He pretended to need the money to pay his workers and employees in Germany in euros, since he has only US dollars. "There's been a real drama," the judge said. The couple have not yet coped with the deeds and also suffer psychologically from the consequences.
Already in past procedures members of the clan were sentenced to imprisonment as well as heavy fines.
