BOMBSHELL details have been revealed in the chilling case of Michael Schumacher’s £12million blackmail plot.
Two men have been accused of threatening the Ferrari legend’s family and conspiring to reveal the star’s health condition on the dark web.
One of them is said to have worked for Schumacher’s family as a security guard for almost five years.
The man – who can only be named as Markus F due to German law – allegedly stole two hard drives of medical data said to contain the health records of the motorsport legend.
Schumacher, who hasn’t been seen or heard from for over a decade after a horror ski crash, has been looked after by his close-knit family since the accident.
The seven-time world champion’s family have kept his health a guarded secret for years.
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Markus, along with co-accused Yilmaz T who he allegedly hired in return for a small commission, is accused of trying to extort £12million from Schumacher’s wife Corinna by threatening to dump all the data in the public domain.
The former security guard allegedly stole around 1,500 files, including photos, videos, medication lists and the contents of Schumacher’s patient file, BILD reports.
Some of the files were even sent to his family as proof.
On June 3, Yilmaz T, who worked as a bouncer, called Schumacher’s office in Switzerland using a private number, it is claimed.
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He revealed he had two hard drives filled with the sporting legend’s medical records and threatened to leak them on the dark net, it is alleged.
On the morning of June 5, Yilmaz T allegedly revealed he received the data from a third-party source.
He was then given an email address to send some of the files to check their authenticity, it is claimed.
The bouncer then allegedly involved his son Daniel L., who helped his father set up an anonymous email address to send the files.
At around 2pm on the same day, Schumacher’s office is said to have received an email from the private address containing genuine files and pictures about Schumachar’s medical records.
On June 17, Yilmaz allegedly called Schumachar’s office again and demanded £12million for the first time in exchange for the two hard drives that contained all the secret medical records.
He demanded half the money in exchange for the first hard drive and said he would take the rest after three days and hand over the second hard drive, it is claimed.
Soon, Schumacher’s family contacted the Swiss authorities to file a report about the alleged blackmail plot, with Swiss police then working alongside German cops to investigate the case.
On July 4, officers arrested Markus – accused of being the main perpetrator – in his apartment in Wülfrath.
They also detained Yilmaz and his son Daniel L. for the alleged blackmail plot.
Authorities said they were able to track down the alleged extortionists through “technical measures”.
Senior public prosecutor Wolf-Tilman Baumert, spokesman for the Wuppertal public prosecutor’s office, said: “After the advanced investigations, we currently assume that the accused son may have acted more as an accomplice.”
The Schumacher family have been tormented over Michael’s health in the past.
In 2016, a 25-year-old man known as Hüseyin B sent a threatening email to Corinna targeting the couple’s children.
The mum-of-two quickly passed on the email to the police who swiftly tracked down the painter.
After being arrested, the thug was sent to court where a judge sentenced him to a year and nine months behind bars.
The perpetrator was reportedly caught after he told Corinna to send him the money to his personal bank account – something the police easily traced back.
In May, the Schumacher family were awarded £170,000 in compensation after a magazine published a fake AI-generated interview with the racing legend.
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German publication Die Aktuelle claimed to have secured a “world exclusive” with the severely injured Ferrari great last April despite Michael not being seen publicly since his 2013 skiing accident.
In a two-page spread, promoted with a picture of Schumacher, it claimed the seven-time F1 champ had said: “My life has totally changed.”
What happened to Michael Schumacher?
MICHAEL Schumacher’s life was hanging by a thread 10 years ago as medics tried desperately to keep him alive after a tragic skiing crash that left him with horrific brain injuries.
The F1 legend was given the best possible treatment as he was put into a medically induced coma, had his body temperature lowered and underwent hours of tricky operations on his brain.
Back in 2013, the retired seven-time world champion and his then 14-year-old son set off on the Combe de Saulire ski run in the exclusive French resort of Meribel.
Footage from his helmet camera revealed he was not travelling at excessive speed when his skis struck a rock hidden beneath the snow.
He catapulted forward 11.5ft and crashed into a boulder head first that split his helmet into two and left him needing to be airlifted to hospital for two life-saving operations.
At one point his family were told to brace themselves for the worst case scenario as the situation was much worse than originally believed.
At the time, medics said Schumacher was likely to stay in an induced coma for at least 48 hours as his body and mind recovered.
But the coma ended up lasting 250 days – more than eight months.
After he woke up in June 2014, he was discharged from the hospital and sent to his home in Lake Geneva to get further treatment.
Since then his wife Corinna and his inner circle of friends have expertly avoided almost anything leaking out about his health status.
Only small amounts of information have been released including reports that Schumacher was in a wheelchair but can react to things around him.
In 2019, it was said that Schumacher was set to undergo breakthrough stem cell therapy in a bid to regenerate and rebuild his nervous system.
Renowned France cardiologist Dr Philippe Menasche, who had operated on him previously, was set to carry out the treatment that would see cells from his heart go to his brain.
Following the treatment at the Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris, he was said to be “conscious”, although few other details were given about his state.
Source: Motorsport - thesun.co.uk
