Three guilty of attacking the family

Three men have been convicted by a German court for trying to blackmail the family of former Formula 1 Michael Schumacher champion.

Yilmaz T, 53, was imprisoned for three years for threatening to upload 900 personal photos, almost 600 videos and confidential medical records to the dark network unless the Schumacher family paid 15 million euros (£ 12 million).

His 30 -year -old son received a six -month suspended sentence for helping and inciting extortion. A former security guard at Schumacher’s house, who denied any participation, received a suspended sentence of two years.

Schumacher has not been seen in public from a 2013 ski accident, which resulted in serious brain lesions. His family has maintained his private medical condition.

The father and son had admitted most of the positions and Yilmaz T, a nightclub gorilla in Constance in southern Germany, told the court that what he had done was “very, very unpleasant.”

“I realized that the second day in prison. I will answer for it.”

In his confession, he said he had received two hard drives from the security guard, Markus F, who was accused of transmitting sensitive files for a “sum of five figures.”

It is believed that a hard drive has never recovered.

The judge blamed the security guard for allowing the blackmail to try. The Schumacher family lawyer said they would challenge his suspended sentence.

Markus F had been working for the family 18 months before Schumacher’s ski accident.

According to the defense, Schumacher’s wife, Corinna, had asked him to digitize the private photos of the family. They argued that the material disappeared after their contract was terminated.

The court heard that the father and son had sent an email to the Schumacher family samples of the stolen files.

Telephone call recordings made to the Schumacher family were also reproduced in court.

In one of these conversations, Yilmaz T told the family that, instead of trying to blackmail them, he was offering to act as a runner to return the files and identify his source in what he called a “clean treatment.”

The family alerted local authorities in Switzerland that tracked the source of the threat to Germany and the three men were arrested in June 2024.

The Schumachers lawyer, Thilo Damm, said the sentences were too indulgent for what was the “definitive betrayal” and planned to appeal.

“We do not agree with everything the court said. You may be sure that we will exhaust all legal possibilities at our disposal,” he said.

He also expressed concern that a hard drive remained missing despite multiple searches for the properties of the defendants.

“We don’t know where the lost hard drive is,” Damm said, “I don’t have a glass ball, but there is the possibility of another threat through the back door.”