Dresden. Supposedly entire areas of the building can be measured in no time with the expensive special technology. The problem, however, was that no one could ever attest to the existence of these devices. The curious process surrounding the so-called coordinate measuring machines ended in April 2020 at the Dresden Regional Court – and has now been repeated there after the Federal Court of Justice referred the matter back for re-negotiation. It was about the sentence.
The driving force behind the fraud and the main culprit was 50-year-old surveyor Mario M. from Dresden, who has been in custody since February 2019. He appeared in his hussar piece as a buyer and had the devices – the piece for 17,300 euros – financed by banks and leasing companies.
The co-defendant Gregor T. (51) from Heidelberg, on the other hand, an old colleague of M., has been operating as a manufacturer since 2014, wrote invoices and passed all the nice money on to M. The public prosecutor’s office put the value of the approximately 70 devices sold at more than 1.6 million euros. Minus the installments of around 500,000 euros that M. had paid to keep his “pyramid scheme” going, he is said to have earned a little more than a million euros. On the other hand, some received 200 euros per device, a good 17,000 euros in total.
Three bogus car break-ins
The trial of several months at the Dresden Regional Court ended on April 30, 2020 – M. was sentenced to four years and ten months imprisonment for fraud in 21 cases and bankruptcy. Gregor T. received a suspended sentence of one year and ten months “only” for complicity in the frauds.
The court was convinced that M. had also faked real estate deals in order to get his booty aside. That was bankruptcy. Other cases were discontinued in which M. had faked car break-ins and reported them to the police and his insurance company. Three times dozen measuring devices would have been stolen from his car – in Croatia, London and Liverpool.
Mario M. moved his place of residence to England in 2017 so that his bankruptcy proceedings could take place there. The district court had spoken of a “bouquet of circumstantial evidence” as evidence of the acts. Among other things, M. had incriminated his own notes, which investigators had found on Ms computers.
On the other hand, M. had maintained until the end that his devices existed, even if this was not proven. He had submitted more than 70 requests for evidence, but he had made no progress on the matter. His stories became more and more crude and observers wondered whether he was actually no longer covering up the proof of existence.
In fact, there had been simpler measuring devices that a business partner of M. had manufactured. They were the blueprint for the later deception. M., investigators liked to call him “Super Mario”, initially stated in his trial that he should not disclose the manufacturer in order to protect them. He later claimed that the only difference between the miracle devices and the existing devices was the setting of one or more switches on internal electronic components. But whichever way you turn it, the devices remained an idea.
Gregor T., on the other hand, had claimed that he had nothing to do with the fraud, had not even suspected anything criminal. He put all the blame on M.
Classic accomplice
Now, a good year later, another criminal division had to deal with the case again. The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) had rejected the defense attorney’s appeal in February – but not that of the public prosecutor’s office, who had demanded that T. was not an accessory, but a classic accomplice and had to be convicted more severely. That is also how the BGH saw it.
The trial was about issuing new total prison sentences for the defendants. The presiding judge Monika Müller explained that the allegations could no longer be legally challenged according to the BGH requirements. But of course the defendants tried again to present the allegations as unfounded. It didn’t help them.
Gregor T. received a three-year and two-month prison sentence for fraud – and must now actually be imprisoned if the judgment becomes final. Without his help, the deeds with the high damage would simply not have been possible, said Judge Müller. Mario M. was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment because the Federal Court of Justice had objected to the so-called total sentence formation in his case as well.
Super Mario is supposed to be planning a webshop in custody
It was interesting that M., who had disputed large parts of the first process with long readings of his page-long explanations, surprisingly said nothing more in the end. Instead, Gregor T. read a long closing remarks in which he portrayed M. as a psychopath who lives in a fantasy world, manipulates other people in a targeted manner and who, Ts, took advantage of his “willingness to help”.
Gregor T. described himself as the “manufacturer” of the devices that an employee of M. assembled before T. carried out the final production and quality control. But T. had never been able to prove an existence either.
In the end, the 51-year-old even claimed that Super Mario was trying to sell the devices while in custody. In February of this year he approached friends about setting up an online shop for this purpose. T. only wanted to know by chance one day before the trial. According to SZ information, the investigative authorities have this allegation on the screen.
This judgment is not yet final either.
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