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Arno Funke (born 14 March 1950), alias Dagobert, is a reformed German extortionist, now an author. [1]
| This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(February 2011) |
An automotive and sign painter by trade, Funke was later medically examined at trial and said to have minor brain damage likely from the fumes from his workspace. [2] He began his criminal career in 1988 when he found himself needing a small amount of money to kickstart a new career as a sausage-vendor on Germany's streets.
Funke planted a small bomb in a KaDeWe department store in West Berlin, [3] and phoned from East Berlin. At the time, East Berlin's infrastructure and police services were often not integrated with their Western equivalents. [4] He successfully extorted 500,000 DM. [3] Having spent the money, Funke returned to extortion in 1992. This time he chose Karstadt, Germany's largest department store. On 13 June, a bomb detonated in a shop in Hamburg. Funke set up a complex money transfer scheme, with a box attached magnetically to a train. In August, he escaped with the box, but it contained only a few hundred marks, otherwise being filled with scraps of paper. [3] He continued to target Karstadt stores through 1993 and 1994, but did not obtain any further money. [3] One of his bombs did $4.5 million in damage in the sporting section of Karstadt in Bremen. [5]
For six years, the extortionist who had started calling himself Dagobert after the German name for Scrooge McDuck, baffled police and entertained the general public. Due to his careful precision and effort to eliminate any chance of anybody being hurt in his attacks, he was seen as a harmless prankster by many, and "I am Dagobert" T-shirt sales were brisk at kiosks throughout the city. When police released a tape of his voice in an attempt to trace him, a music group mixed it into a rap song dedicated to "Dagobert", during his later trial he would explain that he wanted to be like the Disney character and "swim in money".[ citation needed ]
To collect his blackmail payments, he would devise intricate mechanical devices that would speed along railroad tracks, have false bottoms and he continued to elude detection, though he barely eluded capture at the last minute several times, including once when a pursuing detective slipped on wet leaves and fell.[ citation needed ]
| This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(February 2011) |
He was finally caught on 22 April 1994, and sentenced to 7 years and 9 months imprisonment; the sentence was later increased to 9 years imprisonment on appeal. It was estimated that the police had spent nearly $20 million on his pursuit.
He was released on parole after serving 6 years and 4 months on 15 August 2000. The expected media frenzy caused authorities to actually release him a day early to avoid the crowds.
| This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(February 2011) |
He wrote a book in prison about his exploits and has held a job since 1998 as a cartoonist at a publishing house under a work-release program. In 2004 a British television studio created a special entitled The Heist which saw Funke teamed with Peter Scott, Mathew Bevan, Joey Pyle and Terry Smith (All celebrated criminals in different fields of expertise) in an attempt to "steal" a painting from the London Art Fair, steal a TVR Sagaris prototype and hold hostage a prize-winning racehorse whilst attempting to extort a ransom of the horse owner. In 2013 he was in the TV "Jungle Camp", the German version of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!
Scrooge McDuck is a cartoon character created in 1947 for The Walt Disney Company by Carl Barks. Appearing in Disney comics, Scrooge is a Scottish-born American anthropomorphic Pekin duck. Like his nephew, Donald Duck, he has a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a red or blue frock coat, top hat, pince-nez glasses, and spats varying in color. He is portrayed in animation as speaking with a Scottish accent. Originally intended to be used only once, Scrooge became one of the most popular characters in the Disney comics world, as well as Barks' signature work. Scrooge is an extremely rich duck who lives in the fictional city of Duckburg in the fictional U.S. state of Calisota, whose claimed location is in real-world California, United States.
Extortion is the practice of obtaining benefit through coercion. In most jurisdictions it is likely to constitute a criminal offence; the bulk of this article deals with such cases. Robbery is the simplest and most common form of extortion, although making unfounded threats in order to obtain an unfair business advantage is also a form of extortion.
Dagobert or Taginbert is a Germanic male given name, possibly from Old Frankish Dag "day" and beraht "bright". Alternatively, it has been identified as Gaulish dago "good" berxto "bright".
Edgar Eugene Pearce is a British extortionist and bomber who was convicted of the Mardi Gra bombings, a three-year blackmail and terror campaign in the London area between December 1994 and April 1998.
Psychomech is a horror novel written by Brian Lumley and published by Panther Books in 1984. This book is approximately 334 pages in length and focuses on the events in the life of Richard Garrison, a corporal in the British Royal Military Police, after meeting Thomas Schroeder, a rich German industrialist. The novel focuses heavily on the idea of extra-sensory perception (ESP).
Karstadt Warenhaus GmbH was a German department store chain whose headquarters were in Essen. Until 30 September 2010 the company was a subsidiary of Arcandor AG and was responsible within the group for the business segment of over-the-counter retail.
The Harvey's Resort Hotel bombing took place on August 26–27, 1980, when several men masquerading as photocopier deliverers planted an elaborately booby trapped bomb containing 1,200 pounds (540 kg) of dynamite at Harvey's Resort Hotel in Stateline, Nevada, United States. After an attempt to disarm the bomb, it exploded, causing extensive damage to the hotel but no injuries or deaths. The total cost of the damage was estimated to be around $18 million. John Birges Sr. was convicted of having made the bomb with a goal of extorting money from the casino after having lost $750,000 there. He died in prison in 1996 at age 74.
Norbert Hans Poehlke, The Hammer-Killer, was a German police officer (1971–1985) and serial killer who after he committed suicide in 1985 was found to have committed several bank robberies and related murders. He was tagged as the "Hammer-Killer" for his modus operandi of killing drivers of cars and using a sledgehammer in later bank robberies in which he would use his victims' cars as getaway vehicles.
Ali Baba Budesh was a notorious Indian extortionist and underworld mobster, based in Bahrain. He was mostly active in 1990s. Fearing backlash from the Mumbai police, Budesh fled to Bahrain in the late eighties, where he opened up his new base of operations in the capital city of Manama. He died in coma as he was suffering from sugar related illness.
Walter Paul Minx was a young German immigrant who, in 1940, conspired with his brother Kurt, to extort $100,000 from a Sears Co. executive by threatening to blow up a Sears store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Minx planned to abscond with the money in a home-built submarine but quick police work eventually led to his arrest and imprisonment.
Black Hand extortion was a criminal tactic used by gangsters based in major cities in the United States. In Chicago, Black Hand extortion began around 1900 and had all but faded away by 1970, replaced by the Mafia. The Mafia was initially organized by Johnny Torrio and further organized by Al Capone into the extant Chicago Outfit sometime later. Black Handers in Chicago were mostly Italian men from Calabria and Sicily who would send anonymous extortion notes to their victims emblazoned with a feared old country symbol: the "Black Hand". The Black Hand was a precursor of organized crime, although it is still a tactic practiced by the Mafia and used in organized crime to this day. The Black Hand gangsters of this time period differed from the Mafia by lacking formally structured hierarchies and codes of conduct, and many were essentially one-man operations. Black Hand blackmail was also common in New York, Boston, and New Orleans. Victims would be threatened with being beaten, shot, or have their place of business bombed if they did not pay. Starting around 1909, Black Hand activity was causing difficulties for mob boss Big Jim Colosimo, a former Black Hand gangster and owner of brothels throughout Chicago. Colosimo's life was being threatened with demands for cash to ensure his physical safety. In an effort to fix the problem, he recruited Johnny Torrio, who was a member of New York's Five Points Gang at the time, to come to Chicago. Torrio would later become the famous successor to Big Jim Colosimo and mentor Al Capone as the organized crime ruler of Chicago.
The Tesco bomb campaign was an attempted extortion against British supermarket chain Tesco which started in Bournemouth, England, in August 2000 and led to one of the largest and most secretive operations ever undertaken by Dorset Police. During the campaign, a blackmailer identified by the pseudonym "Sally" sent letters to Tesco stores threatening to harm customers if his demands—for Clubcards, modified so that the holder could withdraw cash from ATMs—were not met.
Black Hand is a 1950 American film noir directed by Richard Thorpe and starring Gene Kelly as an Italian immigrant fighting against the Black Hand extortion racket in New York City in the first decade of the 20th century.
Marianne Bachmeier was a West German woman who shot and killed Klaus Grabowski, a man on trial for the rape and murder of her daughter Anna, in an act of vigilantism in the District Court of Lübeck in 1981. The case sparked extensive media coverage and public debate. As a result, Bachmeier was convicted of manslaughter and unlawful possession of a firearm. She was sentenced to six years and released on probation after serving three. Bachmeier moved abroad but returned to Germany after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She died at the age of 46 and was buried next to her seven-year-old daughter, Anna, in Burgtor Cemetery, Lübeck.
Satish Chandra Dubey is an Indian politician and the Minister of State of Coal and Mines in the Government of India. He is a Member of Rajya Sabha from Bihar currently. He won the 2014 Indian general election from Valmiki Nagar constituency being a Bhartiya Janata Party candidate. He was earlier elected to the Bihar Legislative Assembly from Natkatiaganj in 2010. He serves as a Member of the 'Standing Committee on Labour'.
Signa Holding GmbH is Austria's largest privately owned real estate company. Signa Holding GmbH announced insolvency proceedings at the end of November 2023. The company will apply for self-administration restructuring proceedings at the Commercial Court of Vienna.
Olaf Däter is a German spree killer who has been dubbed as Oma-Mörder ("Granny-Killer") by the media.
Heinrich Max Pommerenke was a German serial killer. Detained since 1959, he was the longest-serving prisoner in Germany at the time of his death.
Ocasio v. United States, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court clarified whether the Hobbs Act's definition of conspiracy to commit extortion only includes attempts to acquire property from someone who is not a member of the conspiracy. The case arose when Samuel Ocasio, a former Baltimore, Maryland police officer, was indicted for participating in a kickback scheme with an automobile repair shop where officers would refer drivers of damaged vehicles to the shop in exchange for cash payments. Ocasio argued that he should not be found guilty of conspiring to commit extortion because the only property that was exchanged in the scheme was transferred from one member of the conspiracy to another, and an individual cannot be found guilty of conspiring to extort a co-conspirator.
Arwed Erich Imiela, known as The Bluebeard of Fehmarn, was a German serial killer who killed four women for monetary purposes in Fehmarn from 1968 to 1969. While he insisted on his innocence, Imiela would later be convicted of all the killings and sentenced to life imprisonment, dying in prison in 1982.
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