Arno Funke alias Dagobert, is a reformed German extortion

Extortion

Extortion is a criminal offence which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion. Refraining from doing harm is sometimes euphemistically called protection. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime...

ist, now an author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

.

Life

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.

Extortions

He planted a small bomb

Bomb

A bomb is any of a range of explosive weapons that only rely on the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy...

 in a KaDeWe

Kaufhaus des Westens

The Kaufhaus des Westens is a department store in Berlin. With over 60,000 square metres of selling space and more than 380,000 articles available, it is the second largest department store in Europe; trumped only by Harrods in London...

 department store

Department store

A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...

 in West Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, and phoned from East Berlin (Still very different areas, East Berlin's infrastructure and police services often not connected to the Western equivalents). He successfully extorted 500,000 DM. He returned to extortion in 1992, having spent the money, placing a bomb in Karstadt

Karstädt

Karstädt is a municipality in the Prignitz district, in Brandenburg, Germany....

 in Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

. He set up a complex money transfer scheme, with a box attached magnetically to a train. In August, he escaped with the box, but it contained only a few hundred marks, otherwise being filled with scraps of paper. He continued to target Karstadt stores through 1993 and 1994, but did not obtain any further money.

One of his bombs did $4.5 million in damage in the sporting section of Kaufhaus des Westens

Kaufhaus des Westens

The Kaufhaus des Westens is a department store in Berlin. With over 60,000 square metres of selling space and more than 380,000 articles available, it is the second largest department store in Europe; trumped only by Harrods in London...

, Germany's largest department store.

For six years, the extortionist who had started calling himself Dagobert after the German incarnation of Scrooge McDuck

Scrooge McDuck

Scrooge McDuck is a cartoon character created in 1947 by Carl Barks and licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Scrooge is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a red or blue frock coat, top hat, pince-nez glasses, and spats...

, 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

Hip hop music

Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

 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.

End of criminal career

He was finally caught on April 22, 1994, and sentenced to 7 years and 9 months imprisonment; the sentence was later increased to 9 years imprisonment on appeal. It was estimated that the police had spent nearly $20 million on his pursuit.

He was released on parole after serving 6 years and 4 months on August 15, 2000. The expected media frenzy caused authorities to actually release him a day early to avoid the crowds.

Life afterwards

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, Mathew 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, steal a TVR Sagaris

TVR Sagaris

The TVR Sagaris is a sports car designed and built by the British manufacturer TVR in their factory in Lancashire.The Sagaris made its debut at the MPH03 Auto Show in 2003. The pre-production model was then shown at the 2004 Birmingham Motorshow. In 2005 the production model was released for public...

prototype and hold hostage a prize winning racehorse whilst attempting to extort a ransom of the horse owner.

Books

• Mein Leben als Dagobert. Die Bekenntnisse des Kaufhauserpressers, Ch. Links, Berlin 1998, ISBN 386153164X