Gold is valuable. Also the shavings that occur during the production of wedding rings. A factory worker sacks them illegally piece by piece until they add up to whole bars. That's why the Baden-Württemberger has to go to prison for a long time - and probably loses even more than his freedom.
The former worker at a gold ring factory in Pforzheim regularly went to collect the gold shavings and then took them away. According to the court, he melted the loot worth 960,000 euros in his garden shed and sold it in bars to fences in Cologne. The criminal division of the Pforzheim branch of the Karlsruhe Regional Court sentenced the confessed 50-year-old to three years and eight months in prison for 27 commercial thefts.
Pforzheim is the German jewelery town. The judge pointed out to the man in his very brief verdict that he might face another trial. "Half of the allegations have not been settled." Because originally the charge was 66 cases. The value of all the gold was estimated at almost 1.7 million euros. The remaining 39 cases were separated. In those cases, the man claimed to have received the gold filings from someone, the judge explained. In this context, chat logs must now be evaluated. Then it is decided how to proceed.
The 50-year-old was arrested at the end of last year. He committed the crimes that have now been sentenced from mid-2019 to the end of 2021, as the prosecutor explained. He had requested a prison sentence of four years and nine months. The defense wanted their client sentenced to no more than three years.
The defense attorney said the theft was made easy for the defendant. Earlier there had been "shrinkage" in the company with the gold filings. However, nothing was done about it by the company. In addition, a large part of the loot had been secured and the man wanted to make up for the damage. However, the house has not yet been sold.
The prosecutor said the defendant had created an ongoing source of income by stealing the gold filings. The money from the sale was put into the family home, among other things. A whirlpool was installed or a conservatory was added. An unusual amount of cash was also found during the search. "He had high six-figure sums at home." The man deliberately exploited the lax security measures at his employer, the prosecutor said. He went to work to be able to steal. Not an isolated case, but not the norm in the industry either.
While the security concepts in the refineries are very high and efficient, there are always similar cases everywhere, said York Tetzlaff, Managing Director of the Fachvereinigung Edelmetalle (FVEM). "There are supposed opportunities. And when these come together with the handling of valuable materials and criminal energy, then that can happen." Refining establishments primarily protect themselves with pocket and body scanners, there is a strict four-eyes principle, some companies also have special shoe brushes for possible production residues or sticky floor coverings, and the amount of precious metals running through the company is continuously measured.
Again and again employees, especially outside the refineries, succumb to the temptation and smuggle gold filings out of the production facilities. At the end of March, a man in Regensburg was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for allegedly stealing fine gold filings. Overall, it was about stolen goods with a total weight of at least 68.4 kilograms. The judges estimated the value of the stolen goods at around 1.13 million euros. The man had kept about 400,000 euros for himself. The rest had gone to a middleman who had resold the gold. In the verdict, the man was also charged with four cases of drug trafficking.
