A trick thief asks salespeople in the store to show him the latest cell phone models – and steals them unnoticed during a consultation. The perpetrator was not first noticed with the scam in Munich.
There are quite a few traveling criminals who commit crimes across Europe. And it is not uncommon for them to involuntarily “settle down” in Munich. One of them is a 46-year-old Dutchman who, thanks to the police investigative work, now also knows the inside of the German penal institutions. The man had devised a relatively simple scam with which he could steal a total of 13 high-priced cell phones in various electrical shops in Munich. For this – and because he is already well known in the international police force – the Munich District Court sentenced him to imprisonment of two years and nine months.
The defendant said at the trial “to have money for the drugs” that he “took the things.” He had smoked marijuana at the time, but after therapy in Holland he was now clean, he told the jury. He now has a wife and a baby and a job at home. Sitting in jail and not being able to see your baby, “this is no life”. However, this realization came too late.
The man had traveled to Munich in September 2020 for the trick thefts. The police officer was able to explain exactly how he proceeded on the basis of the video recordings in the shops in court. The Dutchman always specifically asked in the shops for the highest quality cell phones at a price of up to 1400 euros, which had to be fetched from the warehouse. Then he asked for advice and swiftly exchanged the packaging box with the cell phone for prepared packaging boxes he had brought with him in his briefcase. “It was done very quickly and very professionally,” said the policeman in court. The signed sales contract was canceled and the alleged customer hurriedly disappeared from the store.
The investigator quickly inferred the same perpetrator in all nine cases, and he had also made a nationwide inquiry and found out that such cases had also surfaced in Switzerland and France. And he found that the perpetrator was no stranger. The man had already been sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment in 2011 for multiple thefts in Germany and to a nine-month suspended sentence in 2018 for theft. The latter will be revoked after the new offense.
The trained electrician had traveled home again after the deeds in Munich, but drove across the border to Germany to go shopping in April 2021 due to the corona restrictions in force in the Netherlands. He was finally arrested on German soil. According to Klaus-Peter Jüngst, press spokesman at the Munich District Court, the judgment is final.