A 38-year-old Italian has been sentenced by the Bülach District Court and will be deported.
The gas station network never existed.
The scam was professional. It wasn’t the alleged company project in which hundreds of small investors in Switzerland and Germany invested: A 38-year-old Italian fraudster is on trial in the Bülach district court. He has no professional qualifications and has broken off an electrician apprenticeship.
He bought a company shell for little money. From February 2016 to April 2019, he managed to rip off around 450 investors and sell them worthless shares for an alleged gas station network in Spain. According to the public prosecutor responsible, the amount of the crime is more than 15 million euros.
The sales documentation made a serious impression on the investors: glossy brochures and a professionally designed website. In it, the self-service gas station chain was praised as “one of the fastest growing companies in the Spanish petroleum industry”. Thanks to lower costs, petrol can be offered more cheaply. According to the indictment, the prospect of expanding the network by ten additional gas stations per year was “completely unrealistic”. In the real world, the company only owned two gas stations, which never turned a profit.
The accused ran his own call center, through which up to ten telemarketers tried to persuade potential victims to invest. The salespeople were intensively trained in the necessary interview techniques. There were also telesales teams in Germany and Spain. The employees received commissions based on the share of sales proceeds. According to the indictment, this led to a culture of competition in the open-plan office of the call center with corresponding aggressive acquisition. Proceedings against several co-accused are still pending.
As the indictment states, investors with no financial experience are said to have been contacted by telephone. Pensioners invested part of their pension fund capital or their savings. A woman invested her IV pension capital.
The stock prices were pure fantasy
According to the indictment, the accused constantly increased the company’s share price and set a new fantasy price every month. The share prices were published “daily updated” via various Swiss bank portals. The Italian justifies the constantly increasing sales price of the shares with an alleged constant expansion. There was no connection to the actual net asset value of the company.
Over a period of around three years, at least 351 investors initially bought shares with a par value of CHF 0.10 at a price of between EUR 1.50 and EUR 4.80 per share. As a result, the accused and his accomplices took in around 10.6 million euros and 1 million francs. Only around 8 percent of the income was invested in the actual expansion of the gas station company.
As soon as the sale of shares in a company faltered, the accused simply founded a new company and sold the shares using the same methods. At least 145 investors invested another 3.3 million euros in the second company. The third company had 42 investors with 450,000 euros. Some of the same investors sunk their money in different companies. The accused is said to have financed a luxurious lifestyle from the proceeds.
Is there any money left in Dubai?
The trial of the 38-year-old Italian takes place in an abbreviated procedure. The prosecutor and the defense attorney made a deal. The proposed verdict is four and a half years in prison for commercial fraud and multiple qualified unfaithful business dealings. According to the Federal Supreme Court, the sentence must be reduced by a third in the case of a full confession. Five years is the maximum penalty that is possible in the abbreviated procedure.
In addition, a country expulsion of 7 years is proposed. Confiscated luxury wristwatches and real estate are sold. The acknowledgments of damages to the private prosecutors in the proposed judgment comprise around 20 pages. It’s about claims of several million. The accused acknowledged the smaller claims in the amounts. In the case of larger sums, he only agrees to an acknowledgment in principle.
The Italian speaks accent-free Swiss German in the courtroom. He admits that he pulled all the strings behind the scenes. The presiding judge asked the crucial question of whether it had been intended from the outset that the money would not be used as intended. The accused replies “Yes”. This admitted the fraud. In his concluding remarks, however, he puts it into perspective: “I don’t need it to use it.”
A private prosecutor may also ask him a question. The injured party claims that money has flowed to Dubai. Whether the authorities had tried to get hold of these funds. He doesn’t know that, the accused explains. He has a “Permanent Resident Visa” for the United Arab Emirates and, according to the indictment, is also subject to tax there in relation to his private income.
The District Court of Bülach approves the proposed judgment. The accused fully acknowledged the facts. The requested sanction appears to be appropriate. The civil claims have been recognized, says the court chairman. Because the accused has been in custody and early sentence since February 2019, he has already served more than two-thirds of his sentence. Therefore, the court orders his release. He is referred to the migration office for deportation.
A private prosecutor present fears that the convict will now “make a nice life in Dubai”.
Judgment DH220022 of June 15, 2022, abbreviated procedure