Overview
- Prosecutors in Kempten, who filed charges Wednesday, accuse a 40-year-old city employee and his 38-year-old wife of 335 counts totaling about €1.34 million from 2020 to 2025.
- The regional court in Kempten must decide on opening a trial after the couple’s mid-November 2025 arrests left them in pretrial custody.
- A bank’s anti-money-laundering alert over frequent cash deposits triggered the probe in November 2025 and led investigators to the pair.
- Investigators say the employee used city-issued keys to open meters and the locked cash cassettes, then fed coins into bank accounts or supermarket coin machines that issued shopping vouchers.
- Prosecutors also seek forfeiture of about €584,000 they say was taken from 2015 to 2020 despite those alleged thefts being too old to prosecute, and the city has since changed locks, added checks, and hired an external operator.