A fake police officer wanted to cheat Florian Perkmann.
But the Miesbach master baker turned the tables - and handed the trickster over to the real police.
"Hello, this is the police": This is how a phone fraudster contacted Florian Perkmann.
The Miesbach master baker didn't hang up, but played along.
In the end, Perkmann handed the perpetrator over to the police - and he has now been convicted.
Miesbach -
Yes, he has quite a bit of gold jewelry.
Lots of cash anyway.
And because of his slight handicap, he would be very grateful if his valuables were picked up quickly and brought to safety.
Florian Perkmann didn't leave anything out on the phone to give the tricksters the feeling of having landed the big coup.
"They really believed everything," says the Miesbach master baker, almost a bit surprised by his previously unknown acting talent - and by the naivety of the false police officers.
“Total idiots,” says Perkmann.
And is proud to have handed at least one of them over to the real police.
On Tuesday, July 7th, the phone rang in Perkmann's apartment.
"Unknown number", the display said.
When Perkmann answered, he winced briefly.
"This is the criminal investigation department," the caller answered with a slight accent.
The alleged police officer said that there had recently been a few break-ins in the neighborhood, an employee of the local savings bank was in cahoots with the thieves.
And then came straight to the point: “He asked whether I had money, jewelry or savings accounts in the house,” Perkmann remembers.
With him the proverbial ten had long since fallen.
So the master baker switched to attack.
He served up a tale of lies to the crooks that the beams bent.
“They got to the wrong person with me,” says Perkmann and laughs.
On the phone, however, he did everything he could to pretend to be the perfect victim.
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The perpetrators wanted to be on the safe side.
They asked Perkmann to describe his jewelry and (of course only to rule out counterfeit money) read out the serial numbers of his 200 and 500 euro bills.
Perkmann's creativity was in demand.
“I have neither jewelry nor that much cash in the house,” he reports with a smile.
So he quickly googled for jewelry photos on his tablet and read the numbers from his five euro bills in his wallet.
"They swallowed that too."
Then Perkmann put pressure on it.
He now has to see a doctor, he lied, in order to force a quick "handover".
The perpetrators agreed and - as the master baker later discovered - put a 30-year-old Armenian in Grafing into a taxi.
The driver had no idea that he was so involuntarily becoming the chauffeur of a getaway car.
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When the fraudster finally rang the Perkmanns' doorbell, the police were already on their way.
But there was no arrest at the front door.
“He then noticed that something was wrong,” recalls the master baker.
The young man then fled and stormed towards Schützenstrasse.
There he ran into the undergrowth - and finally flopped over a retaining wall into the Schlierach.
The police, who now had five patrols and a large number of civilian workers, finally caught the alleged colleague in the adjacent forest, reports Perkmann.
The (real) Kripo then tried to get at the messenger's backers.
Not an easy undertaking, as Perkmann learned.
“The masterminds are mostly in Turkey.” Nevertheless, the master baker is happy to have convicted at least one of the wrong police officers.
“He's not ripping off any more.” On Thursday, the perpetrator, a 30-year-old stateless person, was sentenced to several years in prison by the Munich District Court (see box).
How dangerous the perpetrators are, he discovered on the same day in his own family.
Shortly after the arrest, the phone rang again in his home.
His mother told him the police had called and asked how the handover went, says Perkmann, visibly shaken.
She didn't even notice that it was the fraudsters again.
"You can see how easy it is to fall for something like that."
so called
Munich District Court imposes prison sentence
On Thursday, the 30-year-old con artist had to answer before the Munich district court.
Master baker Florian Perkmann was invited as a witness.
The facts are "by and large admitted", the defendant had his defense attorney explain at the beginning of the hearing, thus admitting that he knew the background to the failed collection.
Often it is different: The people collecting the goods portray themselves as victims of the people behind them and can then only be convicted of money laundering.
However, the defendant has denied that he was involved in the mafia-like structures and wanted to create a permanent source of income.
The lay judge's court saw both things differently, sentenced the man to three years and four months' imprisonment for attempted commercial gang fraud and presumption of office, thereby joining the public prosecutor's request.
The collection attempt was a "one-time thing", emphasized defense attorney and defendant.
However, the chief investigator of the criminal police contradicted this.
Chats could be found on the defendant's cell phone, from which it emerges that he had already had multiple contact with a Bremen clan that the police suspected to be the mastermind behind the fraud.
“You probably won't have made an appointment to have a coffee,” smiled the detective.
In fact, he let himself be carried away out of frustration, said the 30-year-old stateless person.
His legal status as a foreigner has not been clarified since he was expelled from Germany.
A deportation fails because “there is no country that will take him in,” added his lawyer.
As a tolerated person, he is not allowed to work, but at the same time should pay debts of 28,000 euros.
This lack of prospects should be taken into account to mitigate the penalty, said Judge Lauffer in the grounds of the judgment, but the accused had to ascribe it to himself: the reason for the deportation was his six previous convictions.
Most recently, he was sentenced to six years for extortion and after his release from prison at the end of 2018, he was placed under management supervision.
Whoever commits criminal offenses in open leadership supervision should be punished harshly, Lauffer continued.
This requires the "defense of the legal order".
Even if the accused was "exchangeable", a reliable collector is "one of the most important" links in the chain.
And Perkmann?
On the witness stand he again described the events on the day of the crime, which lasted three hours.
He couldn't explain how the scammers who usually target the elderly came upon him in the first place.
The Miesbach master baker became clear when the defendant tried to apologize to him for the act: "You are rubbing old people who have worked all their lives!"
From Andreas Müller
