Several men are said to have attempted to extort 15 million euros from the family of former racing driver Michael Schumacher using private data. The public prosecutor’s office has now filed charges.
In the case of the attempted extortion of the family of former Formula 1 driver Michael Schumacher, the Wuppertal public prosecutor’s office has filed charges against three men. “The investigations are complete,” said Chief Public Prosecutor Wolf-Tilman Baumert.
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Three men are said to have extorted the Schumacher family
A former security employee of the family is said to have provided private recordings for the extortion for a five-digit amount. According to previous information, he was also responsible for digitizing private photos for the family. The accused is a 53-year-old man from Wülfrath near Wuppertal. A man of the same age from Wuppertal is said to have executed the extortion attempt together with his 30-year-old son.
The transferred data carriers consist of two hard drives and four USB sticks containing videos and image files. These were recorded before and after Schumacher’s serious accident in 2013.
Perpetrators wanted 15 million euros
The alleged perpetrators attempted to extort 15 million euros from the Schumacher family in several calls – otherwise, they would publish data on the dark web.
An employee of the family, who lives in Switzerland, requested a sample of the material as proof. This was sent via a technically untraceable email address. However, the Swiss police managed to trace the caller’s number back to Kassel.
Further investigations led to the two Wuppertalers, of whom the 53-year-old named the Wülfrather as the source of the material and implicated him during questioning before the judge. However, private material of the Schumacher family was also found with the Wuppertal father-son duo.
Father and son acted together
The 53-year-old from Wuppertal is now charged with attempted extortion in a particularly serious case, with his son being an accessory to this. The son remains at large. The man from Wülfrath is also accused of aiding and abetting attempted extortion and violation of personal rights.
The public prosecutor’s office has requested the continuation of pre-trial detention for the two older defendants. The Wuppertal district court must now decide on the admission of the charges for the main proceeding.
Schumachers were not the first victims of extortion
The investigation was initiated after a tip-off from Swiss law enforcement authorities. This is not the first attempt to extort the family of the former racing driver. In 2017, the Reutlingen district court in Baden-Württemberg convicted a 25-year-old man for attempting to extort Schumacher’s wife, Corinna Schumacher, for 900,000 euros. He threatened that otherwise, something would happen to the children. The man was sentenced to a 21-month probationary sentence. At that time, he provided his real account number in an email to Corinna Schumacher.
Formula 1 record world champion Schumacher was seriously injured in a skiing accident at the end of 2013. Since then, he has not appeared publicly.