Millions demanded

Schumacher blackmail: next arrest!

Michael and his wife Corinna Schumacher(Bild: AFP, krone.at-grafik)

In the case of the attempted blackmail of the family of former German Formula 1 world champion Michael Schumacher, the police have arrested a suspected accomplice. It is a 52-year-old man who worked as a security guard for the family, said senior public prosecutor Wolf-Tilman Baumert in Wuppertal. The man was arrested on Thursday in Wülfrath near Wuppertal.

A large number of other items of evidence were seized during the arrest. These are now being evaluated. The investigators had arrested the two suspected blackmailers of the family a good two weeks ago. According to the public prosecutor's office, the 53-year-old man and his 30-year-old son possessed private photos of the family. The photo files found concerned the private sphere of the Schumacher family.

During the investigation into where the two had obtained the photos from the family's private life and immediate surroundings, they finally came across the 52-year-old. Record Formula 1 world champion Michael Schumacher was seriously injured in a skiing accident at the end of 2013. He has not appeared in public since then.

Claim in the millions
According to the public prosecutor's office at the time, the perpetrators claimed to employees of the family that they had files that the family would be interested in not publishing. They are said to have demanded a payment in the millions - otherwise they would publish the data on the darknet. As proof, they had sent some files to the family.

The investigation had been initiated following a tip-off from law enforcement authorities in Switzerland and was originally conducted by the public prosecutor's office in Kassel. According to the investigators, "technical measures" finally made it clear that the suspected blackmailers were operating from Wuppertal. The two suspects, aged 53 and 30, were arrested on June 19 in a supermarket parking lot in Groß-Gerau, Hesse. The two are also no strangers to the police: according to the investigators, they are on probation in another case.

Not the first time
This is not the first attempt to blackmail the family of the former racing driver. In 2017, the Reutlingen district court in Baden-Württemberg sentenced a 25-year-old man for attempting to blackmail Schumacher's wife Corinna Schumacher for 900,000 euros. He had threatened that otherwise something would happen to the children. The man was sentenced to a suspended sentence of 21 months.