Court Document Received - Plumber found guilty of charging excessive fees among craftsmen.
Markus B., a 40-year-old man from Essen, was accused of committing commercial and gang fraud. He had received training in plumbing and had most recently worked as an operator of a janitorial service. He voluntarily confessed to the Pirna District Court in Saxony.
"I was contacted by a member of the 'Handyman Angels,' a company that had a reputation for scamming customers," said Markus B. He played a role in assigning plumbers to customers for whom he received a 15% cut of their payment.
The customers were typically in desperate need of urgent professional assistance. As a result, they were required to pay up to six times the regular payment.
In March 2020, the swindlers were summoned to a flooded cellar in Bahretal near Pirna. The job they performed was subpar, and they charged an excessive €1968.86, which should have been €300. Three months later, they demanded a shocking €1005.19 to repair a damaged water pipe with only two hose clamps - instead of the standard €300 maximum.
For a bedroom infested with bedbugs, they charged €1979.56, while for a blocked pipeline, they charged €1845.56. The standard maximum cost was set at €500. In 2023, the gang of fraudsters was discovered, and the company from Regensburg was accused of approximately 250 cases from all over Germany. The proceedings against the gang leader, who, according to the court, collected 50% of the excessively high salaries, are still ongoing.
Markus B. spent 4.5 months in custody and had 17 previous convictions (including theft, fraud, and drug offenses). The local court recently sentenced the plumber to two years of supervised probation. If he successfully completed the probation period of four years, he would avoid jail.
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Source: symclub.org
