The manager of the Michael Schumacher motoring legend told a German court how he received a call from a man who demanded £ 12 million or “published photographs” of the F1 pilot “on the dark website.”
Sabine Kehm, 60, who works for the Schumacher family for more than 25 years, was yesterday the first witness to declare in the explosive plot of blackmail that involves a father and a son and former bodyguard of the seven -time world champion .
It is said that they demanded the money after the former security guard Markus Fritsche, 53, was fired from his work at the Swiss house of the ASES of the careers in 2021, but not before taking hundreds of private family photographs with him.
Together with Fritsche, the goalkeeper Yilmaz Tozurkan, 53, and his son, an expert in computer science, Daniel Lins, 30, who uses his mother’s bachelorette name, who uses his mother’s bachelorette name.
Schumacher, 55, has not been seen in public from a terrible ski accident in the French Alps in 2013 and before the case began the family presented a motion to request that the details of their health and injury were not discussed in public.
Mrs. Kehm told Wupppertal court, near Dusselford: “I received a call and it was a number we did not recognize, so at first we did not respond, as we do not usually do, to unrecognized numbers.”
“But he kept calling and calling, so in the end I replied, and he was a man who said he had photographs of Michael and said that if the family did not want to be published on the dark website, he could help.”
“He said it was an intermediary and that we would have to pay 15 million euros. He said the money was for photographs and their intermediary service.”
The seven -time world champion Michael Schumacher, 55, photographed with his wife Corinna, has not been seen in public since a ski accident in 2013 left him seriously disabled and needs 24 -hour attention.
Sabine Kehm, 60, who has worked for the Schumacher family for more than 25 years, was the first witness to declare about the explosive blackmail plan.
Ferrari’s legend health updates have been few and spaced in recent years.
The material came through a safe email address that Lins had created for his father in June this year, to Schumacher’s office in his family home in Gland, Switzerland and the police was alert and the trio arrested two weeks later .
Mrs. Kehm said: “I recognized them as private photographs and when I saw them I thought they could only come from an employee.”
“I was sure that someone had to be from our internal circle who worked for us, I suspected from the first moment that it was someone who no longer worked for us.”
Mrs. Kehm described how a nurse who took care of Schumacher after her accident “seemed to get along with Markus Fritsche.”
He added: “I remember that I used to see Fritsche already in particular speaking together.
“But finally she left, we had problems with her, we had problems with the way in which attention was given.”
Tozurkan, who works in a nightclub in Constanza, on the border between Germany and Switzerland, previously said before the court that Fritsche handed him the material: 1,500 images, 200 videos and confidential medical details after meeting him in a coffee.
Tozurkan said at the audience: ‘He said he was in possession of this material and asked if we could do something with him. I said: “I will ask but we can definitely do something.”
Former Security Guard Markus Fritsche, 53, was fired from his work at the Swiss house of the Careers in 2021, but not before taking hundreds of private family photographs with him.
Fritsche allegedly recruited his old friend Yilma Tozurkan (in the photo) and his expert in IT to extort the family who had hired him with the amazing sum of money.
In the photo: the housing block where Toztuerkan has an apartment in the city of Wuppertal in Germany.
Markus Fritsche (left), Daniel Lins (quarter to the right neck black) and Yilma Tozurckan (behind) in court yesterday
Before the case began, the Schumacher family presented a motion to request details about their health and their injuries were not discussed in public.
The data were on two hard drives and four USB memories, but during the procedure it was learned that a hard drive that TozTurban said that he had hidden in his mother’s house had not been recovered.
He added: “I was going to try to sell them first, but when I did not get any interest it was when I got in touch with the Schumacher family.”
Tozurkan said he understood that the photographs had been delivered to Fritsche “by a nurse” and said they showed Schumacher in “poor health.”
He said to the court: “It is easy to say things in retrospect, I only thought I could earn some money with history.”
The case continues.
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