`Marzipan blackmailer’ sentenced to over four years in prison

A man convicted of leaving a box of poisoned marzipan hearts at a school in Northern Germany and blackmailing a supermarket chain has been sentenced to four years and nine months in prison. 

Dubbed the “marzipan blackmailer’’ by German media, the 38-year-old left the tainted marzipan at a school in Kiel last September and threatened to do so at three other schools if supermarket chain Coop failed to pay him 3.2 million dollars.

 He demanded the blackmail sum in the digital currency Bitcoin. Although no one ate the marzipan, judge Ralph Jacobsen told the Kiel court that the case had been especially serious because it involved the health of the city’s school children. “Half the city was worried,’’ he said. 

Experts who examined the marzipan hearts said they contained a substance that was not life-threatening but could bring about severe health problems.