How convincing is the story of a Pro Trial-Lawyer being fooled by a 'Midnight Notary' and some 'Port Lawyers'?

Fuellmich and his team want to convince you that 25 years after he educated journalists of DER SPIEGEL about pitfalls of fishy property deals, he himself has become the victim of such schemes. Really?

The trial against Dr. Reiner Fuellmich has gone into a recess over the Easter holidays. 8 days of hearings have gone past in a court room in Goettingen, Germany. Reiner Fuellmich himself, his former collaborator in the class-action effort, Dr. Justus Hoffmann, the notary public who handled the house sale, and Viviane Fischer, Fuellmich’s co-host at the Corona Investigative Committee have been questioned.

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Looking at what emerged during the hearings before the court in Goettingen, it appears odd how an experienced trial lawyer, who has seen all the tricks his client’s adversaries used, should fall victim to something similar in his own case when faced with three rather unexperienced attorneys. But this seems to be exactly what both Fuellmich and his legal team want to convince the court of: that 25 years after Reiner Fuellmich educated the journalist of DER SPIEGEL about the pitfalls of fishy property deals, he himself has been tricked by three “Port Lawyers”. He had even stayed in contact with them during his stay in Mexico, so that they knew even of his travel plans when he would be in the German Consulate. This got him into pre-trail detention in a maximum security prison in Goettingen, from where he is regularly transferred in handcuffs to the trial hearings. Many within the Freedom Movement seem to believe that this is possible.

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The trial, and possibly even more so the ongoing pre-trial detention of Reiner Fuellmich continue to agonize and upset people around the world, given that Fuellmich has become one of the most prominent faces of what has come to be known as the “freedom movement”.

The circumstances of Fuellmich’s arrest at Frankfurt Airport on October 13th, 2023, and his preceding extradition from Mexico serve to trigger all sorts of theories about conspiracies and collusions. The German state, it is said by many, wants to make an example of Fuellmich for his outspoken opposition against the German government and leading protagonists of the pandemic policies as well as the science, such as Professor Christian Drosten, who developed the first PCR-test for Covid. Fuellmich has pledged to go after those responsible, especially naming Drosten, by way of a class-action effort, for which he said he was uniquely prepared in his capacity as an experienced trial-lawyer, both in Germany as well as in the state of California.

Summer of 2022: How it all came about

Many people around the world that have come to appreciate Reiner Fuellmich’s work are laying the blame for his present ordeal at Viviane Fischer’s doorstep. And Reiner Fuellmich and his legal team are fanning this sentiment. On September 2nd, 2022, Viviane Fischer had informed the public that Reiner Fuellmich “as of now” was not going to be part of the CIC-sessions. Later, it was revealed that the CIC had run into financial difficulties earlier in the summer, with behind-the-scenes-efforts ongoing since July, which eventually failed. Several prominent figures of the German speaking world of critics, such as Professor Ulrike Kaemmerer, Dr. Renate Holzeisen, and, most prominent, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg had been assisting Viviane Fischer before the fall-out, and they also continued to work with Fischer at the CIC, even after Reiner Fuellmich had started to attack her, and Wolfgang Wodarg - for accusations they had in fact not made - as early as September 9, 2022.

Reiner Fuellmich’s team have been specualting about collusion between Viviane Fischer and the three former colleagues of Fuellmich from the class-action effort, since the criminal complaint had been filed on the same day Viviane Fischer made her announcement during the first CIC-session following a two week hiatus on Sept 2nd .

In a video that was aired on Sept. 9, 2022, documented below, Fuellmich said that “with the help of Wodarg it was insinuated [by Fischer] that I had pocketed money from the class action effort. (…)”.

This kind of self-defense by Fuellmich, where he was the one who opened public discussion about specific issues over which the parties were said to be at odds, was quite unusual. A true leader of any relevant organization would strive to calm things down, instead of exacerbating tensions by opening specific issues. Fischer until then had not disclosed the nature of the discussion and the reasons for Fuellmich’s absence. It was simply a matter of fact: “Reiner” was going to be absent for the time being, pending the search for a solution for certain issues. Fischer had also expressed her optimism, that “everything will bring us together and forward”. Fuellmich, instead, publicly began to open certain issues over which the CIC was at odds, and “for which there might be no common ground”. Interestingly he also said, Fischer had been “against professionalism” in running the CIC. Which responsible leader would escalate a conflict like that in a moment of crisis?

Two weeks later, Viviane Fischer for the first time spoke publicly about details. In a video message on September 22, 2022, she laid open the true causes under discussion. Probably the most distressing factor was that Reiner Fuellmich had authorized without Fischer’s knowledge monthly payments to his Law Firm of € 29,750, totalling over time to some € 650,000 of money which had been donated by supporters to the CIC. This needs to be understood against the backdrop of the CIC-statutes which stipulated that no member should receive benefits from the CIC. Fischer expressed “problems to believe” that any services should have been rendered by Fuellmich’s law firm to the CIC which could have justified payments in this order of magnitude.

The whole CIC-blow-up is certainly in part also a matter of responsibility for Viviane Fischer as co-manager of the CIC not having payed attention. However, the onus is, first of all, on Fuellmich to explain how he could justify payments of considerable amounts of money to his own firm, without clearing this explicitly with his colleagues. After all the CIC was an institution where bona-fide donors were making contributions under the assumption that no undue payments will be made to any of the directors.

“No person may benefit from expenses that are alien to the purpose of the company or from disproportionately high remuneration.”
— § 2 No. 3 of the CIC Statutes

What Fuellmich is, and is not, on trial for

Interestingly, this question had been included in the indictment of Fuellmich by the prosecutors, but the judge chose to dismiss outright any charge of possible misappropriation related to these payments. Therefore the trial is “only” about the questions which 2020News, the CIC media platform, summarized thus:

“The case concerns a loan of € 700,000 from funds of the Corona-Ausschuss Vorschalt gUG i.Gr. foundation, which Dr. Reiner Fuellmich received at the end of 2020, or beginning of 2021, which he used privately and has not yet repaid. Whether he was allowed to do so and whether Dr. Reiner Fuellmich was deliberately or de facto prevented by a third party from repaying the loan amount is part of the court's effort to establish the facts.”

In his defense Fuellmich has been arguing that he had always been willing to repay said loan to the CIC with the proceeds of the sale of his house in Goettingen. As 2020News reported:

“According to Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, repayment is said to have been prevented by the fact that the intended sale price of his house was paid almost in its entirety - and allegedly without justification - to the land charge creditor, lawyer Marcel Templin [of the Port Lawyers]. He received €1,158,000 instead of the nominally secured €650,000. Dr. Reiner Fuellmich is of the opinion that Marcel Templin was not actually entitled to anything from the land charge, meaning that he collected the entire sum without due cause.”

Fuellmich asserts he had been effectively defrauded by his former colleagues from the class-action effort, attorneys Marcel Templin, Dr. Justus Hoffmann, and Antonia Fischer:

“The house was sold for 1.345 million. At the time, the land register was clean, it only contained owner's debts. These are land charges that are empty.

And 6 weeks later, Mr. Templin had this land charge registered for himself by way of fraud, blackmail and indirect false certification. If he hadn't done that, and if he hadn't deceived the notary and the buyer and put them under pressure, saying that I would foreclose on the property that you had just bought and that you wanted to move into if you didn't transfer the money to me, then the 700,000 would have gone back to the committee.”

Looking at the details of what happened between the notary and his opponents, Fuellmich seems to have been especially unlucky. After all, he was in the Americas at the time of the house sale, seemingly unable to intervene personally. His anger and frustration about the “scandalous and criminal behaviour” thus seems justified, no?

One might be inclined to have sympathy with Reiner Fuellmich were it not for a very peculiar set of coincidences.

The story of the “Pro” being fooled by a run-of-the-mill-lawyer and a “Midnight Notary”

Fuellmich has often referred to his expertise as experienced trial-lawyer. Since the 1990s he had been involved in a number of cases against big corporations. Many of these cases involved Banks, such as Hypovereinsbank, today part of UniCredit, located in Munich, which emerged from Bayrische Hypothekenbank (Hypo-Bank) and Bayrische Vereinsbank merging in 1998.

According to an unpublished article in German newsmagazine DER SPIEGEL from 1999 (which was released for publication for 2020News by Fuellmich in 2021) the bank had worked closely with shysters to sell bona fide property buyers supposedly "bank-approved" apartments that were, however, only worth a fraction of the purchase price paid. Fuellmich represented many of such kind of clients against several of such banks, and he was quoted in the article as a source with a lot of experience about the pitfalls of property deals for “bona-fide” protagonists.

Readers should take a close look at the report from the courtroom during the hearing of the notary:

• a deletion approval for the three first-ranking land charges was not issued, neither by the bank nor by Dr. Reiner Fuellmich personally, the court learned

• the notary then found a land charge in favor of the lawyer Marcel Templin in the first three ranking positions (a total of € 650,000), which surprised him greatly, the notary continued. And this despite the fact that the contract stated: “Seller (= Dr. Reiner Füllmich, editor's note) assures that no further changes have been made and are not to be expected.”

• An earlier claim to repayment of a loan from funds of the class action. (…) Dr. Reiner Fuellmich received a loan of € 500,000 from Marcel Templin at the end of 2020 from the class action funds to pay off a loan on his property in Göttingen. Dr. Reiner Fuellmich had instructed the bank [the Warburg Bank] to assign the land charges registered in its name for a total of € 650,000 to secure Marcel Templin's repayment claim.

• The notary also reported that Marcel Templin had subsequently [around Christmas 2022] come to his office, accompanied by a man and a woman, and had provided him a trust order to clear the land register.

• Marcel Templin's instruction to the notary was that he could only have the land charge of € 650,000 deleted if he [Templin] received a total of € 1,158,000 from the buyers. The notary proceeded accordingly and transferred € 1,158,000 to Marcel Templin.

• The notary stated that he was not obliged to check whether the claim of a land charge creditor actually still existed

• Dr. Reiner Fuellmich and the notary agreed that the notary had never informed Dr. Reiner Fuellmich of the high sum mentioned in the Fiduciary Mandate agreement/Trust order

• Although his old acquaintance, Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, stated in emails to the notary in no uncertain terms that he could see absolutely no claims on the part of Marcel Templin from the land charge, the notary asserts not to have pointed out to him [Fuellmich] that almost the entire purchase price was to be paid out to the land charge creditor. An email from Dr. Reiner Fuellmich to the notary was read out in which he wrote "it's worth a try". The notary testified that he understood this to mean that Dr. Reiner Fuellmich had given his consent to pay out the € 1,158,000. He expressed the opinion in court that Dr. Reiner Fuellmich should have protested unequivocally when he [the notary] informed him [Fuellmich] that he now wanted to proceed in accordance with the trust order. Dr. Reiner Fuellmich had apparently not asked what the exact amount of the trust order was, but the notary had probably not communicated this order to him either

• Dr. Reiner Fuellmich did sue Marcel Templin in expedited urgent proceedings to have the deletion approval handed over. His application appears to have failed in court. No further details were given as to the reasons for the failure.

• The notary was informed about the urgent legal protection proceedings and stated that he also had documents on this in his file, but he had probably not dealt with them and had probably not even read them. The judge asked the notary whether he would have taken into account a decision favorable to Dr. Reiner Fuellmich. The notary stated that he would have probably read through such a decision and examined it. He refused to commit himself to whether or not he would have observed such a decision in any case

• Dr. Reiner Fuellmich had also failed with another lawsuit against Marcel Templin for the return of all funds from the class action. Viviane Fischer explained that she had received the first page of the court's decision. She reported that the action had been dismissed as inadmissible because Dr. Reiner Fuellmich had not submitted a correct application. He had demanded "all monies" from the class action. However, this was too vague for the court, as such a general claim could ultimately not be enforced because a bailiff would not know what exactly he was supposed to enforce.

The unpublished DER SPIEGEL-article has some information about the way criminal property deals were done during the 1990s, when Fuellmich was protecting his clients. He is even quoted:

“In addition to the bank and sales, there was also "a third pillar of real estate fraud", Kratzer found out: the "network of notaries".

Across Germany, 162 selected notaries were allowed to notarize the contracts - notaries who did not take the rules of professional conduct too seriously. This group, a small minority in the guild of around 10,000 members, played an important role. Before Hypo transferred a building loan to a notary's escrow account, it took out a so-called fidelity insurance policy with Hamburg-based Hermes to cover itself against "damages resulting from the notary's intentional or negligent misconduct". Hermes refused to insure 162 notaries [which were the preferred partners].” [emph. added]

(…)

“With notaries who take their "duty to inform and instruct" seriously, many a home purchase would probably not have been concluded. The notaries on the Hermes list were not so picky. They were even on call when the brokers dragged in their victims. The "midnight notaries", as Fuellmich calls them, often notarized late in the evening, even around midnight, and were available to help on Saturdays and Sundays.” [emph. added]

Even the instrument of issuing Trust orders, by which fraud was organized, was not new to Reiner Fuellmich.

“The power of attorney was a carte blanche for the trustees, who played just as important a role as the notaries. Lawyer Nittel calls them "untrustees". There were a whole series of such "fake trustees" (Fuellmich), but Cologne-based CBS or its sister company KT were particularly good at business. Just as the bank supposedly only financed, the notary only notarized, the trustee only processed: he ‘does not check” was the standard expression’” — DER SPIEGEL, unpublished in 1999

Viviane Fischer speculates:

• Could it be that there is a deeper level? Could money have been removed from the access of Dr. Reiner Fuellmich's creditors in coordination with other parties? In my opinion, Dr. Reiner Fuellmich himself cannot be excluded from the circle of possible parties involved

• The fact that the notary notarized on a public holiday reminds me of the unpublished Spiegel article from 1999 written by a friend of Dr. Reiner Fuellmich and published by 2020News on 1 February 2021. It talks about so-called “midnight notaries” who notarized the purchase contracts of unsuspecting buyers of junk real estate in the service of the banks. (…) The "midnight notaries", as Fuellmich calls them, often notarized late in the evening, even around midnight, and were available to help on Saturdays and Sundays.

• Fuellmich’s house was sold on October 3, 2022. It was a holiday (Day of German Unification).

Given the fact that Reiner Fuellmich had been under obligation, and willing, to pay back the loan to the CIC, it seems quite extraordinary that he should not have taken precautions against sloppy handling of said deal. He bemoans that Templin had failed to secure the loan in due time, but Fuellmich himself failed to provide clearings about the deletion of land charges which he knew needed to have been provided by Marcel Templin. This makes it even more surprising that he should have been unaware of the possibility of more things going wrong. Why did he not make explicit provisions to the notary of how to handle the sensitive deal in October of 2022? Why did he thus contribute to the messy affair? After all, Fuellmich repeatedly stated that he was the one requesting professional handling of issues with respect to the CIC. The return of a CIC-loan certainly would have warranted professional handling, no?

The loan from Templin to Fuellmich

When in 2022 Fuellmich (wrongly) attacked Wodarg in the September 9 video of accusing him [Fuellmich] of misappropriation of class-action money, he may have spelled more beans than he wanted. At the time the public was unaware of the fact that there had, indeed, been a loan which presumably was supplied from funds of the class-action effort. This loan was issued by Marcel Templin, who put Fuellmich on notice to pay it back in December of 2021.

Translated version of letter terminating the loan by Marcel Templin, dated December 30, 2021. Facsimile provided by Deepl.com translation.

It may also be of note that sometime in 2021 the story broke of how personal data from clients/plaintiffs for the class-action had been hacked. Fortunately for Reiner Fuellmich, these clients had been handled by Marcel Templin’s law firm, where the hack had been performed by unknown agents. Templin allegedly had become the manager (and contractual partner for plaintiffs) because Fuellmich had asked Templin to step in because he, Fuellmich, was without a bank account in 2020. Fuellmich, according to his lawyer, offered to all the clients of the class action an offer to switch to Fuellmich after the leak had happend.

Anonleaks in 2021 posted about class-action clients personal details being exposed.

“Nearly all” of the clients are said to have taken up that offer, resulting in Templin being required to transfer the downpayment of € 952 per client to Fuellmich. Templin and his colleagues apparently felt that foul play may have been involved. Behind the scences they seem to have been in constant contact with Fuellmich over the matter.

In any case, Templin had not received the repayment of his loan from Fuellmich. Fuellmich, in return, seems not to have received the money from the clients of the class-action, either! Comments by his lawyer on Bittel TV seem to indicate that until September 2nd of 2022, the day Viviane Fischer announced absence of Fuellmich from the CIC, all parties seemed to have been in a state of “truce” about the money: Fuellmich apparently wrote to Templin sometime after the data leak occured that “the loan was obsolete with all plaintiffs being represented exclusively by me [Fuellmich].” The matter was still under dispute in the summer of 2022, as was indirectly confirmed by Fuellmich’s Counsel Katja Woermer in the Bittel-TV-interview: “There was no decision about it by a court.”

What to make of all of it?

The whole affair is murky. What seems to be very clear, however, is that Reiner Fuellmich is not the White Knight in shining armor, who claims to have been ambushed by “dark forces”. Instead, he himself, seems to have been part of creating a financial mess, possibly more. That the German State would not let this opportunity go to waste, by which the whole “movement” can be atomized, should be clear to Fuellmich more than anyone. As a “responsible leader”, he should reconsider his strategy.

Certainly Fuellmich seems to have been in command of enough experience to forsee the kind of problems he eventually faced, or is still facing. A Notary who acts on a public holiday is one thing (if that notary is a good friend from college, as Fuellmich told the judge). But if that notary seems to act as the kind of “midnight notary” Fuellmich claimed to have come across in his career fighting against fraud, one may wonder.

One may also wonder about the financial affairs of Fuellmich, and concerning the specifics of the first loan from lawyer Templin. Where did that come from, if not from the class-action money? Fuellmich seems to have made exactly that connection, according to his lawyer. Templin may be a bad actor, as many of Fuellmich’s followers seem to assume. But if you find yourself target by a cyber-attack, resulting in a colleague who had taken a loan from you “convincing” your clients (who may have provided the money for the loan you handed out to that colleague in the first place ) to ditch you, putting you under an obligation to hand-over the money (which you may have “loaned” to your colleague): what would you do? What would you do if you subsequently learn of more financial irregulaities, in which your former colleague seems to be involved?

I don’t know what I would do. But if I were in Reiner Fuellmich’s shoes now, I know what I would not do: I would certainly not continue to make the public believe that I am the adult in the house, given what people now know.