Apparently Formula 1 legend Michael Schumacher’s family were the target of one of the dumbest blackmail attempts ever.
From here.
Usually you are trying to *get *people’s bank info when trying to scam them.
Kinda like the bank robber who writes his demand note on the deposit slip in the back of your checkbook; you know, the ones with your name & address printed on them. :smack:
I’m surprised by the sentence…
Even making the assumption that the threat wasn’t found to be credible, I’d think being involuntarily committed for at least a while would be the start, rather than simply ‘the obligation to seek psychiatric help’…
German courts are frighteningly lenient on people who commit crimes against celebrities.
Journalism Fail: The headline reads “blackmail”, but the suspect was threatening Schumacher’s family. That’s extortion, not blackmail. The terms are not interchangeable.
According to Google Translate, they are. In German, one word, “erpressung”, for both concepts.
(Maybe Google Translate’s wrong but in this limited context I doubt it.)
Maybe blame the English translator, I suppose. The fact English makes the distinction may not be common knowledge to ESL speakers.
Too late to ETA, so tackily quoting to add: Doing some cross-comparisons in German-language Wiki, apparently German borrowed the French word “chantage” for blackmail as distinct from extortion. If the original German material used “erpressung” (as that’s what the crime is called), it would have probably been more natural to use “extortion” than “blackmail” in the English, but “blackmail” seems to be treated as an extension of the crime of extortion so lumped in with it. Understandable confusion, IMHO.