German pensioners jailed for kidnapping and torturing financial adviser

A gang of German pensioners have been handed jail terms for kidnapping their financial adviser and torturing him in a cellar for four days. Victim James Amburn blew the four wealthy OAPs' £2.3million savings on the US sub-prime mortgage market. And in a bizarre caper that left police astonished, the elderly plotters snatched him off the street and threw him into a specially prepared dungeon in a bid to force him to pay back the cash.

The kidnappers hit Amburn over the head with a Zimmer frame and stuffed him in a cardboard box, then wrapped him in duct tape until he "looked like a mummy" after stopping to get their breath back.



They then bundled him into a car boot and took him 300 miles to a secret prison on the shores of picturesque Lake Chiemsee in Bavaria.

After stripping him him naked, they burned him with cigarettes and chained him up "like an animal". They also broke several of his ribs with a chair leg before 40 police commandos stormed the house and saved him.



"The fear of death was indescribable," Amburn, 56, who is being investigated for fraud, told the plotters' trial. "I didn't know if night was day or day was night. I never thought I'd make it out alive."

The ringleader of the gang, Ronald Koenig, 74, was jailed for six years. Koenig's sidekick, Willy Dehmer, 60, got four years. Koenig's wife Sieglinde, 79, got 21 months and doctor Iris Fell, 63, got 18 months. The women's sentences were suspended. The judge called it "a spectacular case of taking the law into their own hands". Prosecutors said the kidnap last June was "almost surreal - but it happened".