[ad_1]
Prosecutor Aljoscha Leder’s room exudes the same cool and sober atmosphere as almost all the Berlin Regional Court offices in Moabit. Filing cabinet, flowerpot, desk. The 31-year-old runs a department in the organized cybercrime department.
Now he is sitting at his desk, documents in front of him. A few days earlier, a few doors down, in room 504, he had heard the verdicts against Shahin B. and Johannes F. quite satisfied: seven years and six months and five years and six months, respectively. Leder had accused her of, among other things, commercial forgery and commercial fraud. The prosecutor had only worked on this case for one year.
Harsh judgments for such acts. “But it was also a case that is unique to us, something like this has never happened here before. He is also unbeatable in audacity ”. The case has caused a sensation.
It’s not just about Shahin B.’s earlier story. The distinguished attorney was sentenced to four years in prison for minors for commercial fraud in the field of cybercrime. In the open execution he immediately cheated again. and at the same time he successfully sued for a legal internship at the Berlin Court of Appeal. With the help of an association committed to the rehabilitation of offenders.
The racy side note: On the day the Higher Administrative Court issued its verdict in favor of Shahin B., he had been detained again for three weeks.
In this case we have used almost everything we have in terms of resources “
Complicated and time-consuming investigations make this case special. “In this case we have almost everything we use the funds we have, ”says Leder. “But it is a test of what we can do, even in the complicated realm of cybercrime.”
Only through this detailed work was Leder able to put together many individual threads and prove that they formed a complicated web of scams. An observation with sometimes 20 officers, telephone, video and postal surveillance, three officers of the State Police of Criminal Police (LKA) who worked exclusively in leather for weeks, a special vehicle with which you can know almost exactly where someone is at phone, all included.
[Mehr aus der Hauptstadt. Mehr aus der Region. Mehr zu Politik und Gesellschaft. Und mehr Nützliches für Sie. Das gibt’s nun mit Tagesspiegel Plus: Jetzt 30 Tage kostenlos testen.]
In the leather case, the case started in April 2019 after a credit card company filed a complaint with the LKA. The company recorded that its credit cards were debiting a lot of money in a very short time, but the accounts were not balanced. The LKA verified the alleged account holder. The result: names and addresses were forged. The perpetrators received credit cards and account opening requests sent across Germany through a chain of forwarding requests to fictitious addresses. But simply checking the respective recipient and their personal details was laborious and time-consuming.
The attacker appears for the first time in person at the DHL station.
The penultimate link in the forwarding chain was a mail collection station in Berlin. The perpetrators had rented the locker also under aliases. The last link was a DHL station in Berlin, which the police learned from the post office, which had to forward the material. “The transition from digital to analog,” says Leder. “This is the most dangerous moment for the perpetrators.” Because at some point they have to appear in person, they have to have credit cards and applications in their hands.
The DHL station was not under video surveillance, the perpetrators were very careful. So the LKA put up its own video camera. It was programmed to turn on when the locker in question was opened.
[Wenn Sie alle aktuellen Nachrichten live auf Ihr Handy haben wollen, empfehlen wir Ihnen unsere runderneuerte App, die Sie hier für Apple- und Android-Geräte herunterladen können.]
After a few days, a perpetrator appeared. However, his face was only blurry. On the other hand, the researchers were able to recognize very well the logo of a rental company that was attached to a car. The vehicle was right next to the DHL station. “We asked the company for the tenant’s name,” says Leder. “It was an investigative approach, perhaps the perpetrator had used the vehicle.”
Then the answer. “It was our jackpot,” says Leder.
The vehicle was rented by Shahin B. That Shahin B., whom the police had long had in their files, was convicted of exactly the same acts that investigators are now investigating. It could hardly be a coincidence.
Investigators uncover extensive fraud scheme
It might be even less accidental that Shahin B. always parked a rental car from this company near the ATMs where the perpetrators withdrew money with credit cards. The company had saved all the geographic data of its cars. Researchers monitored the post from the DHL locker and were surprised to find that many credit card and account opening apps ended up here.
“But now,” says Leder, “the real work was just beginning.” Because the LKA verified all the accounts and their alleged owners. It turned out that many of these account holders were fraudulent. The scammed had paid money for all kinds of things in these accounts. Advance payment for the purchase of vacuum cleaners or drills on Ebay, but also money for music concerts. The vacuum cleaners and drills were never delivered, the concert tickets were. Only they were fake.
Some money was exchanged for cryptocurrencies.
The LKA laboriously found that the money in the accounts was not only transferred from one bank to another, sometimes abroad as well, but was sometimes also exchanged for crypto currency.
[In unseren Leute-Newslettern berichten wir wöchentlich aus den zwölf Berliner Bezirken. Die Newsletter können Sie hier kostenlos bestellen: leute.tagesspiegel.de]
Another point was equally important: Prosecutor Leder was able to use the account data to test the fraud system. The defrauded, who waited in vain for their goods ordered and paid for, sat all over Germany, no one knew about the other. For the respective Public Ministry, each report was only an individual case. In most cases, investigations have also been closed.
But Leder, with his overview of the accounts, knew that the same perpetrators were always at work. “There were hundreds of events,” says the prosecutor. “They filled out Leitz files and a wall unit. I have ordered the process to take place here in Berlin. I have resumed all procedures. “
Then the telephone monitoring and observation of Shahin B. began, the investigators also monitored his mail traffic. During this investigation they encountered the second perpetrator, Johannes F. He was also closely monitored. The noose tightened around Shahin B. and Johannes F.
13 searches in three federal states in one day
Then came the so-called “day of action.” That day, several dozen officers in three federal states went to a total of 13 searches, including apartments and lockers.
A sore point of the investigation: Shahin B. and Johannes F. were not allowed to discover that they were being investigated. According to the Freedom of Information Act, you can ask the police if you are in the center of an investigation. Attorney Shahin B. with his distinction, of course, knew it. He also asked, but without success, because no information is given in investigations as in his case.
But the more investigators investigated, the more police officers in Germany knew that a prosecutor in Berlin was on the trail of a fraud scheme. “If some police officer had suddenly spoken at B.’s request, everything would have been exposed,” says Leder. But they all stood their ground.
The prosecutor wants to impute more acts
Shahin B. and Johannes F. were arrested on October 24, 2019. But their case is not over yet. Because Leder wants to accuse her of other acts that he has investigated.
Above all, he is still looking for a lot of money. The prosecutor knows from the monitored chat messages that Shahin B. has probably deposited cryptocurrencies worth around one million euros somewhere in the world. Leder has therefore made requests for legal aid in several countries, hoping to find out, for example, something about funds sent to Lithuania, Great Britain or Ukraine. So far without success.
But the researchers were able to secure at least a comparatively small amount. In Shahin B’s apartment they found 69,000 euros in a soup can.
