Crime Zurich district court sentences Christmas parcel thief

The Zurich District Court has sentenced a 36-year-old Christmas parcel thief to a conditional prison sentence of 13 months, plus a fine of CHF 1,000. The former employee of a parcel service mostly targeted television sets.

The Zurich District Court had originally intended to hand down the sentence - in keeping with the theme - before Christmas 2023. However, due to additional clarifications, the court only decided now, in June.

However, the district court's additional investigations at Swiss Post did not help the parcel thief: the court convicted him of commercial theft, multiple breaches of postal and telecommunications secrecy and other offenses. The court thus largely agreed with the public prosecutor's office, which had demanded a conditional prison sentence of 15 months.

Five years expulsion from the country

As commercial theft is a so-called catalog offence, the Bosnian will also be deported from the country for five years. The court did not recognize a case of hardship in his case. Here, too, the court followed the public prosecutor's request.

The employee of a delivery service who worked for the post office had used the post office's scanning device to acknowledge the parcels as if they had been delivered. However, the customers waited in vain. The accused sold the goods in Switzerland or sent them to his home country of Bosnia.

Televisions, coffee machines, bicycles

He was mostly after televisions, but also included a coffee machine, a power generator and two bicycles. The total value of the 43 stolen packages amounted to over 100,000 francs. According to the man himself, he wanted to use the money to pay off his gambling debts. At the time of the trial last December, his debts amounted to around half a million francs.

For his lawyer, tearing open and stealing the parcels was therefore "an excusable emergency". The 36-year-old was a "good and righteous person" who had taken a wrong turn once in his life and sunk deeper and deeper into the mire.

She demanded a conditional prison sentence of 9 months and a fine of 1,000 francs. She found an expulsion from the country disproportionate. Her client was not a danger to public safety. The verdict is not yet final. The former parcel courier can still appeal to the Supreme Court.

SDA