Arno Funke
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Arno Funke (born 14 March 1950), alias Dagobert, is a reformed German extortionist, now an author.
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. 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.
He planted a small bomb in a Karstadt department store in West Berlin, and phoned from East Berlin (Still very different areas, East Berlin's infrastructure and police services often not connected to the Western examples) demanding 500,000 DM. While they didn't pay, it set up a string of similar attacks and demands across West Berlin including some who did pay. One of his bombs did $4.5 million in damage in the sporting section of Kaufhaus des Westens, Germany's largest department store.
For six years, the extortionist who had started calling himself Dagobert after the German incarnation of 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".
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.
He was finally caught on April 22nd 1994, and sentenced to 7 years-9 months in prison. The prosecution appealed the sentence and it was changed to a full 9 years in prison. It was estimated that the police had spent nearly 20 million dollars on his pursuit. He was released on parole after serving only 6 years on August 15th, 2000. The expected media frenzy caused authorities to actually release him a day early to avoid the crowds.
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, Matthew 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.
