Johann Friedrich Hohenberger

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Johann Friedrich Hohenberger also John Friedrich (born September 7, 1950 in Munich , † July 27, 1991 in Sale, Victoria , Australia) was a building contractor in Germany and Australia, safety engineer and director of the semi-state road safety watch National Safety Council of Australia in the Australian state of Victoria and has been considered one of the greatest impostors in the history of the continent since a fraud scandal in 1989.

origin

Hohenberger was born in Munich as the younger of two sons of the textile manufacturer Johann Christian Hohenberger (1915–1996) and his wife Elisabeth Sophie Christina. He initially worked as a subcontractor for the Munich branch of the Regensburg road and tar construction company STRATEBAU, where he was noticed in December 1974 for embezzlement of 300,000 DM. He is said to have fraudulently billed orders for roads to remote farms and alpine pastures, the alleged construction work never took place. When the air bookings were discovered and the police were looking for him, Hohenberger was on a skiing holiday in Italy. Apparently warned, he left his quarters and never returned. It was said that he died skiing - a rumor that seemed to be confirmed when his luggage was found a year later. Unofficially, a suicide was suspected, although the German security authorities remained skeptical after Hohenberger's disappearance.

Escape to Australia

On January 20, 1975, a man who called himself Friedrich Johann Hohenberger arrived in Melbourne from Auckland , New Zealand . His ticket was issued for an onward flight to London, the journey was also started according to the airline's data, but it is assumed that Hohenberger actually stayed in Australia at the time. In March of the same year he found a job in the remote community of Pukatja (formerly Ernabella), which was mostly Aboriginal. Hohenberger called himself from then on John Friedrich and claimed to have been born in Mount Davies / South Australia in 1945 . In his work he is said to have shown great organizational skills, but also to have stood out as a control fanatic. On February 10, 1976, he married Shirley Kay Manning, a nurse in the Presbyterian Church of St. David in Sydney .

Promotion to the Australian Security Guard

In 1977 Hohenberger applied with forged papers to the National Safety Council of Australia , a private, public institution for accident prevention in traffic and commerce. Although this facility had existed since 1927, it was largely unknown to the public at the time. He started out as a security engineer, but with his downright "hypnotic" skills and a keen sense of bureaucracy, he rose quickly (1982) to director of the Association in the state of Victoria and earned an annual salary of 130,000 Australian dollars (AU $ ). Nevertheless, he should not have been noticed on his property at Seaton near the association headquarters in West Sale / Gippsland due to an unusual lifestyle.

With his impressive black beard and his athletic appearance, Hohenberger gained respect and knew how to make himself popular with his colleagues. Hard-working and ambitious, he turned the originally modest security guard into an increasingly large company with an attached research and rescue center. In addition to his exaggerated need for recognition, the motive for this may have been the great bushfires in Australia in 1980 and 1983, which killed 47 people in Victoria alone. To finance the investments, he took out several hundred million AU $ loans from banks without offering any significant collateral. When asked, he is said to have presented empty boxes with supposedly expensive items of equipment.

Organized on a paramilitary basis, Hohenberger's association provided a fleet of helicopters, smaller aircraft, a 42-meter-long flagship, a mini-submarine, decompression chambers and an infrared scanner. Trainers trained carrier pigeons for rescue operations and wanted to parachute dogs to search for missing people in remote areas. Hohenberger is said to have been particularly proud of a parachute troop. Equipped in this way, the facility met with approval from politicians and was even allowed to take on orders for the Ministry of Defense. The number of employees grew from around 100 in 1984 to 450 in 1989. Hohenberger's prestige projects included a never-ever realized test facility with wind and flow tunnels, which was to cost AU $ 9 million. As business relationships with foreign countries increasingly developed, Hohenberger sent confidants on the necessary business trips - he shied away and was afraid of being exposed when he presented his passport. In 1988 he received the Australian Medal of Merit OAM ( Medal of the Order of Australia ), an award that made headlines in retrospect, as Hohenberger had neither valid papers nor an undisputed identity.

Scandal over imposture and fraud

The chairman of the supervisory board of the National Safety Council of Australia , Max Eise, asked Hohenberger after checking the books in March 1989 about obvious inconsistencies. Hohenberger fled and was searched across Australia, which triggered enormous media attention. Sixteen days later, police picked him up near Perth. By then, the national association of the National Safety Council of Australia responsible for the state of Victoria had accumulated debts of around AU $ 250 million, with the State Bank of Victoria being the larger creditor with a loan of over 100 million. Immediately rumors arose that John Friedrich had been a CIA agent, arms dealer, drug dealer or even money launderer. He himself commented on this in his posthumously published autobiography Codename Iago: The Story of John Friedrich 1991 ambiguous to evasive. Before 1975 he wanted to have fought for the CIA against "left-wing extremists", probably just one of many lies. Hohenberger may have had contact with secret services because of the extensive security technology that he managed, but is said to never have been an employee.

After his extradition to the state of Victoria ( Melbourne ), Hohenberger initially spent six weeks in prison before he was released on bail in May 1989. In December, he applied for permanent residency in Australia, but this was denied because of the pending fraud. As a result, he made numerous statements in court, for example before the Supreme Court in the liquidation of the insolvent National Safety Council of Australia . On July 23, 1991, he faced his criminal case on a total of 91 counts and a total of AU $ 293 million in damages alleged by the prosecution. Three days later, Hohenberger committed suicide for fear of deportation. He left a daughter and two sons next to his wife. The body was cremated.

Causes and consequences

The causes of the fraud scandal were a lack of government control and extremely negligent lending by the banks. Hohenberger wrote that he never had to look for money, the banks had almost "forced" it on him. Without the “visionary”, convincing and criminal personality of Hohenberger, the dimensions that finally became apparent would never have been achieved. Shortly before his death, he is said to have planned another, large-scale imposture with real estate businesses in Queensland. Personally, however, Hohenberger benefited little from his machinations. Obviously he was more concerned with satisfying his pathological urge for recognition.

literature

  • Cawthorne, Nigel: The History of Australian True Crime , London 2010
  • Dousset, Ray: Rotor in the Green. To Autobiography. , Thuringowa Central 1996
  • Evans, Louise: Friedrich's Mother Disowns “Fritz” Canberra Times, Aug. 2, 1991, p. 1
  • Friedrich, John, with Richard Flanagan: code name Iago: The Story of John Friedrich , Port Melbourne: William Heinemann Australia, 1991
  • Goodsir, Darren, and John Silvester: The Man Behind the Mask Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 30 March 1989, p. 9
  • Monks, Suzanne: John Friedrich's Last Hours Woman's Day, September 10, 1991, pp. 14-16
  • Morton, James / Lobez, Susanna: Kings of Stings: The Greatest Swindles from Down Under , Sydney 2011
  • Sykes, Trevor: The Bold Riders: Behind Australia's Corporate Collapses , St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1994
  • Thomas, Martin: The Fraud: Behind the Mystery of John Friedrich, Australia's Greatest Conman , Richmond, Vic .: Pagemasters, 1991

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/friedrich-john-15506
  2. ↑ http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/friedrich-john-15506
  3. ↑ https://graham64.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/john-friedrich-and-the-national-safety-council/
  4. ↑ http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/friedrich-john-15506
  5. ↑ https://graham64.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/john-friedrich-and-the-national-safety-council/
  6. ↑ https://graham64.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/john-friedrich-and-the-national-safety-council/
  7. ↑ Morton, James / Lobez, Susanna: Kings of Stings: The Greatest Swindles from Down Under , Sydney 2011, unpag.E-Book
  8. ↑ Morton, James / Lobez, Susanna: Kings of Stings: The Greatest Swindles from Down Under , Sydney 2011, unpag.E-Book
  9. ^ Dousset, Ray: Rotor in the Green. To Autobiography. , Thuringowa Central 1996, p. 300
  10. ↑ https://graham64.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/john-friedrich-and-the-national-safety-council/
  11. ↑ https://graham64.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/john-friedrich-and-the-national-safety-council/
  12. ↑ http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/friedrich-john-15506
personal data
SURNAME Hohenberger, Johann Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Friedrich, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German building contractor
DATE OF BIRTH September 7, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH July 27, 1991
Place of death Sale, Victoria , Australia