process
Jail sentence for man after faked death on Baltic Sea
View into an empty hearing room in the Kiel Regional Court: A married couple was being judged here. photo
© Christian Charisius/dpa
A couple wanted to outsmart 13 term life and accident insurance companies. Now the Kiel regional court has sentenced the 56-year-old and his wife again – to harsher penalties.
For faking his death on the The Kiel Regional Court in the Baltic Sea sentenced a 56-year-old to three years and two months for attempted insurance fraud in 14 cases. The co-accused woman was sentenced by the court to two years probation.
These are total prison sentences including suspended sentences from a first trial against the couple, said the presiding judge Johann Kümmel when justifying the verdict. Letters demonstrated the defendant’s intention to “get their money from as many insurance companies as quickly as possible.”
Several million stolen
The couple is said to have faked the man’s death in a boat accident in the Bay of Kiel in October 2019 in order to get a good four million euros paid out from life and accident insurance companies. After the crime, the defendant hid for months, first in Hamburg and later in Schwarmstedt in Lower Saxony. Special police forces finally found him there in May 2020. His wedding ring flashed in the light of a flashlight as the man hid behind boxes.
Last week, the public prosecutor’s office demanded a total prison sentence for the defendant for attempted joint commercial and gang fraud in 13 cases, including the suspended sentence from the first trial of three years and two months, and a sentence of two years suspended for the woman. The defense lawyers requested acquittals for both defendants. The man and the woman had previously had confessions read out through their lawyers.
Other insurance companies also cheated
The trial was no longer about the actual question of guilt. In February 2021, the Kiel regional court had already sentenced the couple to suspended sentences of one year and nine months or one year for attempting to defraud an accident insurance company. These decisions are legally binding.
However, the Federal Court of Justice in Leipzig overturned the acquittals in 13 other cases of attempted fraud against other insurance companies. The court in Schleswig-Holstein now had to decide on this again.
Three days after the incident in autumn 2019, the woman reported her husband missing. But the police quickly became suspicious. An expert discovered that the boat had been tampered with and that it had caused it to sink. Contrary to what the defendant initially assumed, the death notification was not sufficient for the life insurance companies.
They also wanted a death certificate or confirmation of his death from the district court. But that takes at least six months. The 13 term life and accident insurance policies were not paid out.