Three men have been convicted of trying to blackmail Michael Schumacher’s family for millions of pounds.
A German court has jailed one individual for three years after he threatened to upload 900 photos, 600 videos, plus medical reports of the seven-time Formula 1 world champion to the dark web unless Schumacher’s family paid a ransom of €15million.
A second man has been charged with aiding and abetting by the district court in Wuppertal, western Germany, and issued a six-month suspended sentence.
A former security guard at Schumacher's home was also served with a two-year suspended sentence despite pleading to having had no involvement in the extortion.
German news agency DPA reported that judge Birgit Neubert said the former security worker was responsible for the most significant part of the crime due to a breach of the trust placed in him by the Schumacher family to protect them.
The family’s lawyer, Thilo Damm, said they will appeal in the case against the former security guard as they wanted a four-year prison term.
Schumacher, 56, has not been seen in public since he suffered a serious brain injury while skiing in December 2013.
He retired from F1 in 2012 and was transferred from hospital in September 2014 and has since been cared for privately at the family’s home in Switzerland.
His family have demanded privacy and the blackmail attempt threatened to expose details about his condition.
It is understood that while the majority of the evidence was confiscated by the German authorities, a second hard drive remains missing.
Since his skiing accident, Schumacher’s condition has been a constant source of interest in the media, which has been railed against by the family.
In 2023, the Schumacher family successfully won legal action over a publisher of a magazine that printed an AI-generated interview with the seven-time world champion.
German magazine Die Aktuelle ran his image on the cover in April 2023 with the headline: “Michael Schumacher, the first interview!”
The AI-made article was found to be misleading and the publisher was ordered to pay compensation of €200,000.
The German publisher, Funke magazines, also apologised to Schumacher’s family and sacked the magazine’s chief editor.
