Forgery of documents

Worker scammed his way into loans from banks

The accused wanted to be financially independent.(Bild: Krone KREATIV)

A man from Vorarlberg was living too large, so he became a fraudster. He collected the bill in court in Feldkirch (Vorarlberg) on Monday.

With lawyer Alexander Fetz in tow, the 38-year-old delinquent is once again on trial. "You know how it goes anyway," he is greeted by Judge Alexander Wehinger at the Feldkirch Regional Court. The latter had already sentenced the worker last October to a 15-month suspended sentence and 3600 euros for commercial fraud and forgery of documents. The reason for the conviction: the then drug addict had defrauded or attempted to defraud banks of 290,000 euros in nine cases of credit fraud.

On Monday, the same judge handed down another sentence for the same reason. An additional sentence of four months conditional and a fine of 1,800 euros, which is not yet legally binding. However, this was for acts that the current worker had committed before the first conviction in October. Some of these had remained attempts.

The partner paid
In the end, three of the charges resulted in an "acquittal in case of doubt", as the 38-year-old - thanks to financial support from his partner - had demonstrably paid at least a few loan installments. When asked by the judge on Monday whether his partner had even known about the loans, the defendant replied: "She wasn't privy to everything", referring to the forged documents.

Skimming proceedings
The man's motivation for his criminal actions was: "I didn't want to be financially dependent on my partner all the time." A fallacy, as you can see. In any case, the convicted man is currently undergoing debt collection proceedings.