Three guilty of targeting family

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

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

His 30-year-old son was given a six-month suspended sentence for aiding and abetting extortion. A former security guard at Schumacher’s home, who denied any involvement, received a two-year suspended sentence.

Schumacher has not been seen in public since a 2013 ski accident which resulted in serious brain injuries. His family have kept his medical condition private.

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

“I realised that on 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 passing the sensitive files for a “five figure sum”.

One hard drive is believed never to have been recovered.

The judge blamed the security guard for allowing the blackmail attempt to start. The Schumacher family’s 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 defence, Schumacher’s wife Corinna had asked him to digitise the family’s private photos. They argued that the material went missing after his contract was terminated.

The court heard that the father and son had emailed the Schumacher family samples of the stolen files.

Recordings of phone calls made to the Schumacher family were also played in court.

In one of these conversations, Yilmaz T told the family that rather than trying to blackmail them, he was offering to act as a broker in returning the files and identifying their source in what he called a “clean deal”.

The family alerted local authorities in Switzerland who 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 lenient for what was the “ultimate betrayal” and they planned to appeal.

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

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

“We don’t know where the missing hard drive is,” Mr Damm said, “I don’t have a crystal ball but there is the possibility of another threat through the backdoor.”