All 2 of the 3 suspects arrested for the attempt admitted their guilt blackmail against his family Michael Schumacherasking for €15 million not to reveal footage of the F1 legend’s condition.
The trial began in Wuppertal, Germany, for the attempted blackmail of Michael Schumacher’s family. The main perpetrator appears to be Yilmaz Tozkurnan, a security official, and his son, Daniel Lins, who is allegedly involved as an accomplice. The main suspect was the bodyguard of 7-time Formula 1 champion Marcus Fritsch, who seized 1,500 files containing personal material of the legendary driver who has been in a coma since 2013.
Yilmaz Tozkurnan was clear from the first day in court after pleading guilty. “I admit it, I did this nonsense,” he said as soon as the trial began. According to local reports, when he addressed the lawyer of Corina Schumacher, Michael’s wife, he stressed: “Please tell the Schumacher family that I am truly sorry.”
In fact, afterwards, he did not hesitate to explain the reasoning behind the whole blackmail process. “I thought I could make a little money from this case. The amount should be divided by three. It would reach 10 to 15 million euros. I downloaded the files and copied them to four USB drives. I asked my son to create an untraceable e-mail address,” he said.
He revealed, however, that he got the files from a nurse.
The son of the main defendant also pleaded guilty, confirming that he created the particular e-mail address and recorded a conversation between his father and an employee of the Schumacher family. However, he stressed that he learned the data belonged to the driver’s family after the fact. “I understand my mistake,” he declared.
In contrast, the third accused, the former bodyguard, Markus Fritsche, was not so categorical. His lawyer read a statement in which he claimed that Schumacher’s own family had asked him to digitize these files and store them on hard drives.
He claimed that he has nothing to do with the blackmail case. The trial is set to continue in the coming days.