Marburg court acquits one, fines two over illegal gambling case

A court in Marburg acquitted a 28-year-old man of jointly running commercial gambling and fined two co-defendants for jointly attempting to obstruct justice, according to the court's ruling. The two men, aged 47 and 59, each received a fine of 25 daily rates of €30. The case concerned two table gaming machines without a PTB seal at a bar in Bahnhofstraße.

The alleged gambling took place between autumn 2021 and January 2022. In January 2022, the city's public order office and police carried out a trade inspection at a restaurant in Bahnhofstraße and sought access to the bar in its basement. A witness had reported seeing two table gaming machines there some weeks earlier that did not carry the PTB seal, the official approval mark issued by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt for legal gaming machines in Germany.

According to the prosecution's charge, the two co-defendants, who worked in the restaurant's kitchen, cleared the two table gaming machines from the bar counter and packed them into blue rubbish bags in the cold storage cellar. Police officers caught them doing so as the officers reached the basement bar through the kitchen, the prosecution said, and police officers called as witnesses confirmed this.

The 59-year-old defendant said through his lawyer that his employer had called him two days before the alleged act and instructed him to clear the two table gaming machines from the bar because renovation work was planned. Judge Esser asked the man, who works as a cook, how he had received an order two days earlier and carried it out just as police stood at the door and during ongoing kitchen operations. He replied that he had only followed instructions and said: "Ich hatte keine Ahnung, was das für Geräte waren." The 47-year-old defendant supported these statements.

The 28-year-old defendant said through his lawyer that he had been a student in Gießen at the time and had lived there, and had had nothing to do with his father's restaurant businesses. He said he was called to stand in for his father, who was abroad in January 2022. Prosecutor Schmidt considered the charges confirmed and sought fines, while the defendants' lawyers sought acquittals. The court acquitted the 28-year-old because there was insufficient evidence that he had organised illegal gambling, and fined the two co-defendants for jointly attempting to obstruct justice.