Draft:Thomas Drach

Thomas Draft is a German criminal.

He gained notoriety by the Reemtsma-kidnapping, when he kidnapped the scientist and businessman Jan Philipp Reemtsma in 1996. He had been on trial since February 1, 2022 for four robberies and was sentenced on January 4, 2024 by a chamber of the Cologne Regional Court to 15 years in prison followed by preventive detention.

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Thomas Drach grew up with his younger brother Lutz Drach in Erftstadt near Cologne. At the age of 13 he was first picked up by the police for carjacking. After he had to leave high school due to poor performance, Drach began an apprenticeship as a car mechanic, but gave it up again.

Early crimes
When Thomas Drach was 18, he robbed a supermarket.

Later together with his brother Lutz Drach, he carried out a sensational robbery on a Cologne Sparkasse in 1981. They drove a car through the glass front to the counters, threatened the employees with shotguns and demanded money. Shortly afterwards the two brothers were catched and arrested.

Thomas Drach was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison in 1982, his brother Lutz to ten years.

After his release, Thomas Drach was accused of criminal acivities in Eastern Europe. He commuted between Cologne and Budapest on a regular level. There he appeared as "Sandor Dulai" with a fake Hungarian passport, and occasionally also used the pseudonym Piet Hellmann.

Reemtsma-kidnapping
The Reemtsma kidnapping is one of the most sensational cases in Germany's criminal history. Thomas Drach was the brains behind the largest kidnapping payout in Germany's history.

Drach and his two accomplices overpowered the entrepreneur Jan Philipp Reemtsma on his property in Hamburg-Blankenese on March 25, 1996 and kidnapped him. In a letter to his wife, Ann Kathrin Reemtsma, they demanded a ransom of first 20 million DM, later 30 million DM. In order to show Drach and his accomplices that the family will pay the ransom, Reemtsma's wife should publish a message in the Hamburger Morgenpost. She did so, but the delivery of the ransom failed. In total, Drach and his accomplices held Jan Philipp Reemtsma captive for 33 days in a cellar in Garstedt, near Bremen. Reemtsma was freed after his family finaly paid the ransom of DM 30 million.

Two of Drachs accomplices kidnappers were arrested later in Spain after Reemtsma's release in April 1996. Drach remained at large.

Drach afterwards was travelling around the world under false names. According to CNN, he had driven to Buenos Aires to see a Rolling Stones concert in a luxury Mercedes Benz with a Uruguayan girlfriend. As main perpetrator of the kidnapping Drach was arrested because of an Interpol warrant in a swank Buenos Aires hotel in 1998.

In 2001, the Hamburg Regional Court sentenced Drach to 14 years and 6 months in prison. He was released on October 21, 2013.

The whereabouts of the ransom money from the kidnapping is mainly unclear. The kidnappers received 15 million DM and 12.5 million Swiss francs. The equivalent of around one million euros will have been seized by 2024. In 2001, the Aachen police found $600,000 in the apartment of one of the perpetrators' accomplices who was supposed to launder the money. In 2013, private investigators discovered $459,900 in a safe deposit box in Uruguay that could be traced to Thomas Drach. Jan Philipp Reemtsma received this money back. There is no reliable information about the remaining 14 million euros.

Cash transports raids
In 2018 and 2019, Drach robbed three cash-in-transit vehicles in Cologne and Frankfurt am Main. He stole a total of around 142,000 euros. In two of the attacks, he shot at the transport employees - in one case with a AK47 - and seriously injured the two men.

The public prosecutor's office later assumed that Thomas Drach no longer had any money from the Reetsma kidnapping and therefore carried out "the sometimes ultra-brutal raids" (taz) on the cash transports. In 2024, the Cologne regional court sentenced Thomas Drach to 15 years in prison for robbery and attempted murder. Drach wants to appeal.