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Essen District Court (archive image)
Photo: Bernd Thissen / dpa
A former soccer player from North Rhine-Westphalia has been sentenced to three years and ten months in prison for insurance fraud.
According to the judgment of the Essen regional court, the 35-year-old faked his death in the Democratic Republic of the Congo so that his co-accused wife could collect a high life insurance policy.
The 41-year-old actually received 1.2 million euros at the end of 2016.
She was also sentenced to three years and ten months in prison.
The ex-footballer, who had played among other things in the youth team at FC Schalke 04, had taken out life insurance in 2015 and left shortly afterwards on a visit to his parents' home country - the Congo.
From there, his wife received the news in early 2016 that her husband had died in a traffic accident.
The relevant documents had been sent to Germany.
Defendant spoke of kidnapping
In 2018, however, the former footballer showed up at the German embassy in the Congo's capital, Kinshasa.
He had stated that he was not killed, but kidnapped - by his mother and other relatives and acquaintances.
The family abandoned him after a trip in the jungle.
It then took him around a year and a half to reach Kinshasa.
However, the court did not believe the man's story.
"We are convinced that there was insurance fraud," said judge Markus Dörlemann when giving reasons for the judgment.
The kidnapping story was described "completely superficially, without details and emotions" and also not verifiable.
The defendants themselves had protested their innocence through their defense lawyers and denied a fraud agreement.
The verdict is not yet legally binding.
ptz / dpa / AFP