As of: February 1, 2024, 6:30 p.m
By: Isabel Winklbauer
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Flavio M., Dany M., Milos K. and their three co-defendants confessed to gang and commercial fraud based on false suspicion.
© SIGI JANTZ
A gang of fraudsters preferred to stay at home instead of checking tickets.
To do this, she invented fantasy fare evaders - with real personal details.
Munich - In order to save the S-Bahn from fraudulent passengers, there are inspectors.
But here the inspectors were the fraudsters: six employees of a security company who had no desire for their unpopular job, swindled wages from the railway for almost 1,000 hours of skipped work.
Worse, in order to cover up their blundering, they invented cases of fare evaders - using the personal details of existing people.
The financial damage to her employer, a Munich security company, amounted to 12,595 euros, the public prosecutor's office read out at yesterday's hearing in the district court.
The damage was much greater for those falsely accused: some of them were reported by the S-Bahn and sentenced to penalties as alleged repeat fare evaders.
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Gang of fraudsters in court: Fantasy fare evaders invented with real names
According to the court, the gang may have falsely told around 50 people that they would have to pay a “fare recovery,” as it is called in inspector jargon.
The six inspectors sent each other the ID photographs of the “chosen ones,” all collected from previous real cases, in a Whatsapp group.
“Send me Romanians,” was the code.
The defendant Flavio M. alone, whose cell phone provided the most evidence, used the victims' personal details in 65 cases.
The gang members also organized their free hours via the same Whatsapp group: They agreed the day before exactly when which teams should supposedly have checked which lanes from 3 a.m. to the end of their shift at 2 p.m.
They then entered the working hours and trips in agreement into their electronic recording devices.
They stayed at home or at least didn't set foot on an S-Bahn.
The fraud was ultimately discovered because one of Flavio M.'s fabricated fare evaders had a solid alibi on three alleged inspection dates - she was in prison.
From then on, the federal police investigated.
Inspectors have to meet high “catch” quotas.
© SZ Photo / Stephan Rumpf
“They were put under a lot of pressure”
Alexandra Markowitz, a lawyer for one of the defendants, explains: “The inspectors had to provide a certain number of fare evaders every month, which was not easy to do.
They were put under a lot of pressure.
It was common practice for them to help each other out with cases." A witness from the federal police confirmed something similar: "Your employer gave the inspectors a success rate of 1.3 fare evaders per hour." He therefore initially assumed that the gang members were paying bounties Fare evaders wanted to collect money.
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But the cases were actually invented to conceal the hours not worked, as the cell phone chats ultimately revealed.
Since there were very similar cases in the conscious security company in 2019 and 2021 - but with other people involved - he is also certain: "This is just the tip of the iceberg that we have here."
All six gang members confessed to the crimes in 2018 and 2019 and vowed to improve.
According to the lawyers, they will receive suspended sentences of 15 to 24 months.
Meanwhile, the Munich S-Bahn reports that it has no longer had ticket checks carried out by private security companies for several years, but only by in-house staff or DB Security.
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