The trial of three Turkish taxi drivers and a suspected fencing suspect began Tuesday at the Vienna Regional Court. The taxi drivers are said to have taken dozens of luxury watches – worth between 5,000 and 38,000 euros – from their drunk passengers if they fell asleep during the ride.
The coups lasted four years, starting in 2019, before the first suspect was spotted during surveillance. On September 4, 2023, the fall struck. An undercover investigator equipped with a Rolex got into Yakup T.’s (33) taxi that night. “The officer then pretended to be asleep,” the prosecutor reports. According to the prosecutor, the suspected main perpetrator parked the taxi, waited about ten minutes before he opened the watch’s security strap and hid the surreptitiously removed watch in his left trouser pocket.
After the arrest, several branded wristwatches were seized, others were resold. “It was a unique modus operandi of a criminal organization. “They exchanged information about possible victims and gave each other tips via the WhatsApp group,” the prosecutor said.
Long list of witnesses
Lawyer Rudolf Mayer, lawyer for the first defendant, criticized the fact that the police called on possible other victims to come forward and published a photo of them. His client admits that some of the suspects committed thefts, but that some of them he did not commit. The 34-year-old Turk was also present during a robbery. He is also charged with money laundering and falsifying documents – which could result in up to ten years in prison. Due to the large number of witnesses invited, the trial will take several days.
Source: Krone
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