By Anne Losensky
Berlin Alexanderplatz 2.0: Short trip to the German capital, bank robbery – and generously pay for the taxi back to the Polish border with stolen banknotes!
District Court, Room 606. Accused: Sergej L. (34) from Belarus. Profession? “Footballer”. But he’s not a ball artist, he’s more of a career criminal: in 2010 he ended up in prison in North Rhine-Westphalia for eight years for four robberies.
As soon as he left, he traveled to Germany again as a tourist with false papers. Stay in a hotel on Alexanderplatz in Berlin (around 100 euros/night). Passes the time with shopping (water gun). Then, on September 14, 2021, a masked trip to the Alex Sparkasse.
With a brown paper bag containing what appears to be a gun. “That was the bag of bread from the day before,” he says. The cloth bag he pushed over to the cashier? “From Netto.” The escape? “Take a taxi to Frankfurt/Oder.”
How did he pay? “I had enough, 14,995 euros!” Crossing the border on foot, then driving home to Belarus. There he buys his girlfriend a car: “But she didn’t want anything from me anymore. So I drank for a week, went back to Germany, went to the whorehouse – and suddenly I was in prison again.”
Despite video surveillance, after the robbery he disposed of his jacket and hat in the trash can in the middle of Alexanderplatz. The traces on it were enough, after all his DNA had been in the criminal file for a long time.
“I feel persecuted,” he now wails, “everyone is after me and is preventing me from doing any decent work!”
It was not the first and not the last robbery in the branch, says a Sparkasse woman (58). The cashier from back then can’t even testify as a witness. After another robbery, she is now even in the hospital.
Verdict February 17.