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CRIME

Bauhaus villa scammer gets probation for plot

A woman who posed as a millionaire's heiress to live in a luxury villa for six days was sentenced on Monday to 14 months for the stunt.

Bauhaus villa scammer gets probation for plot
We bet Mandy T. would have liked this house too. Photo: DPA

Mandy T. and her then-boyfriend approached a real estate agent pretending to be interested buyers in a 5000-square-metre property in Bauhaus style valued at €1.11 million in Hamburg.

The pair told the agent that she was a millionaire heiress looking to set herself up with a new home.

She was really a restaurant worker from Quedlinburg in Saxony-Anhalt. Her boyfriend was unemployed.

After agreeing to buy the house and its contents, the boyfriend signed and notarised a sales contract and presented the agent with a fake money transfer receipt. The pair moved in, reported the Bild newspaper, even bringing their possessions with them.

However, six days later with no money appearing in the estate agent's bank account, the gig was up and Mandy T. and her co-conspirator moved out in a hurry, leaving the real estate agent to pick up the bill.

The things they moved in with were also left behind in the house.

In court, the 23-year-old said she was just going along with her ex-boyfriend's plan.

"Unfortunately, I took part but didn't really think about it," she said.  

It wasn't the first time the swindler stood before the courts. According to Bild, she had already served 15 months probation for 38 counts of fraud in 2011. In 2013, she ordered a €99,000 Mercedes but was not able to pay the bill when time came to do so.

Despite the six-day-long stint as a millionaire's heiress in her modern mansion, she said that it wasn't that great.

"We didn't really feel all that great. We also lost half of our possessions," she said.

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POLITICS

Scholz says attacks on deputies ‘threaten’ democracy

Leading politicians on Saturday condemned an attack on a European deputy with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's party, after investigators said a political motive was suspected.

Scholz says attacks on deputies 'threaten' democracy

Scholz denounced the attack as a “threat” to democracy and the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also sounded the alarm.

Police said four unknown attackers beat up Matthias Ecke, an MEP for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), as he put up EU election posters in the eastern city of Dresden on Friday night.

Ecke, 41, was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said. Police confirmed he needed hospital treatment.

“Democracy is threatened by this kind of act,” Scholz told a congress of European socialist parties in Berlin, saying such attacks result from “discourse, the atmosphere created from pitting people against each other”.

“We must never accept such acts of violence… we must oppose it together.”

Borrell, posting on X, formerly Twitter, also condemned the attack.

“We’re witnessing unacceptable episodes of harassment against political representatives and growing far-right extremism that reminds us of dark times of the past,” he wrote.

“It cannot be tolerated nor underestimated. We must all defend democracy.”

The investigation is being led by the state protection services, highlighting the political link suspected by police.

“If an attack with a political motive… is confirmed just a few weeks from the European elections, this serious act of violence would also be a serious act against democracy,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.

This would be “a new dimension of anti-democratic violence”, she added.

Series of attacks

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s EU election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police added that a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had earlier been “punched” and “kicked” in the same Dresden street. The same attackers were suspected.

Faeser said “extremists and populists are stirring up a climate of increasing violence”.

The SPD highlighted the role of the far-right “AfD party and other right-wing extremists” in increased tensions.

“Their supporters are now completely uninhibited and clearly view us democrats as game,” said Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel, regional SPD leaders.

Armin Schuster, interior minister in Saxony, where an important regional vote is due to be held in September, said 112 acts of political violence linked to the elections have been recorded there since the beginning of the year.

Of that number, 30 were directed against people holding political office of one kind or another.

“What is really worrying is the intensity with which these attacks are currently increasing,” he said on Saturday.

On Thursday two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and one was hit in the face, police said.

Last Saturday, dozens of demonstrators surrounded parliament deputy speaker Katrin Goering-Eckardt, also a Greens lawmaker, in her car in eastern Germany. Police reinforcements had to clear a route for her to get away.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

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