Blackmail case Third suspect caught - he worked for the Schumachers

Criminals are suspected of blackmailing the family of former racing driver Michael Schumacher. Two suspected blackmailers have already been arrested. Now a third suspect has been arrested.

In the case of the attempted extortion of the family of former 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 amount of further evidence was seized. These are now being evaluated.

Investigators 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.

Demand for payment 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 was initiated following a tip-off from the prosecution 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.

Another blackmail attempt

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.

dpa