A German court has sentenced a nightclub bouncer to three years in jail over a plot to blackmail Michael Schumacher’s family for €15 million (£12.5m).
Yilmaz Tozturkan is one of three people to have been sentenced over the plan. His son Daniel Lins was given a six-month suspended sentence for his role, according to reports in German media. Markus Fritsche, Schumacher’s former bodyguard, was given a two-year suspended sentence.
The trial found Tozturkan obtained over 1,500 files including images, videos and medical records and told the Schumacher family the private material would be uploaded to the dark web unless payment was made. Tozturkan expressed regret for his actions during the trial.
The Schumacher family’s lawyer Thilo Damm described the sentences as “lenient” and said they would appeal against them. The family also expressed concerns that not all of the sensitive material obtained by the defendants had been recovered despite several searches of their properties.
The seven-times world champion, who retired from Formula 1 in 2012, has not been seen in public since suffering a serious brain injury in a skiing crash in France during December 2013.
His family has endeavoured to keep details of his condition private since then. Soon after the accident one journalist was accused of attempting to gain access to the former driver by impersonating a priest.
The Schumacher family received compensation last year after a German magazine published what it claimed to be an “interview” with the driver, which appeared to have been generated using artificial intelligence. Funke-Mediengruppe, publishers of Die Aktuell, gave the family £170,000 (€200,000).
One of the few official comments made by the family on Schumacher in recent years appeared in a 2021 documentary. In the programme his wife Corinna said: “Everybody misses Michael, but Michael is here. Different, but he’s here, and that gives us strength, I find.”
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