Jrgen Harksen

Passions

Vocation

German finance fraudster and author. Harksen first worked as a bailiff's assistant. After moving to Hamburg in 1986, he moved on to investing money in money launches by investing up to 1300% in non-existent investment companies. Via a snowball system (pozzi scheme), he paid off the first small investors to make sure that the wealthy Hanseatic people were attracted to him. The singer Udo Lindenberg invested 100'000 DM with him, but got doubts overnight and got his money back. Dieter Bohlen mentions Harksen in his biography and quantifies the lost sum to three million DM. However, Harksen denies this and confirms that he has returned the money to Bohlen with a compensation of 600'000 marks. Bohlen never made a criminal application against Harksen. The ruling of the regional court of Hamburg of 11 April 2003 stated that Harksen had fraudulently obtained at least 150 million DM by pretending to be non-existent investments of about three hundred victims in the years 1987 to 1992, of which all but 50 million DM repayments was used for his extremely luxurious lifestyle. In 1993 Harksen and his family fled to Cape Town, South Africa to escape the creditors and escape an imminent arrest. He also acquired new potential investors from there and managed to persuade the old investors by calling them to Cape Town, celebrating elaborate festivals and allegedly presenting serious investors and financial auditors. The Landgericht Hamburg therefore sentenced him to 2 years' imprisonment for fraud and attempted punishment. After years of legal disputes, South Africa handed out Harksen to Germany on 30 October 2002. The Hamburg District Court ordered six years and nine months of imprisonment for fraud in 52 cases. From the Glasmoor prison he worked as freelance chef in a restaurant from September 2005 onwards. In February 2006 he published his autobiography. After serving his sentence, he was released on 12 February 2008. With his second wife, Claudia Smith, whose name he adopted at the wedding, and his three sons, he lived in Hamburg for about a year and then moved with them to Mallorca, where he worked in the wine trade. In a 2007 documentary Harksen gave an extensive interview on his offenses. Dieter Wedel was inspired by the Harksen case to the TV film Greed (German: Gier), broadcast in January 2010. On 8 September 2015, Jürgen (now) Smith was again sentenced to one year and three months' imprisonment by the District Court of Hamburg for fraud (committed 2010). The loss of 121'000 euros has now been repaid by Smith. In 2016, Harksen was suspected of having organized a fraudster for a court trial, which, as a witness, was to cover the defendants with a false declaration against payment of 200'000 euros.