Column “There and Back”: Crash landing of a frequent flyer

Such people used to be called expense knights. That was back when expenses were still reimbursed in Deutsche Marks. So, that was a while ago. But not so long ago that expense knights, as the name suggests, were all still traveling on horseback. Expense knights lived lavishly, using their company's money. The boss paid for it – and often viewed their employees as a kind of robber baron. Some of them took full advantage of the fact that internal regulations weren't nearly as strict as they are today. On business trips, they ate in expensive restaurants, stayed in very good hotels, traveled or flew first class, and always preferred a taxi to public transport. They even devised a business purpose for one or two private expenses.

Overall, some of the reimbursements were quite generous. The catch, from the perspective of those who wanted to make a decent profit from this deal, was that they had to put the money down upfront. So, while they lived beyond their means in terms of pleasure and comfort, they didn't realize any financial gain.

A young man from Sicily has taken a completely different approach. The 26-year-old is still studying, so he can't bill his expenses to a company, but he can bill them to the state. Since the bridge over the Strait of Messina is still just an idea, anyone wanting to leave the island has to fly or take a ferry. This is comparatively expensive, so the regional government covers part of the travel costs when Sicilians need to go to the mainland. Sicily is beautiful, but remote. For flights to Rome or Milan, for example, the state reimburses a quarter of the ticket price, and under certain circumstances even more.

This costs the regional government 33 million euros every year – an average of seven euros per Sicilian. But the student in question thought that much more had to be done. And he took almost 86,000 euros from this budget – within just nine months. He claimed travel expenses of approximately 180,000 euros for 2,600 flights over this nine-month period. In October of last year alone, there were reportedly 892 flights, or about 29 per day.

A German vacationer tried to smuggle an ancient column from Greece. It went completely wrong. And that was a good thing.

Because this is almost impossible, the man himself claims to have sometimes been on three planes at once. Not even former German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher managed that feat, although it was rumored that he had met himself on one or two occasions during his numerous diplomatic trips in the air.

In fact, the man apparently only flew three times during this period. He had forged the remaining boarding passes. Although, to his credit, the details were apparently correct: the departure and destination airports matched the flight number, the seats existed, even the QR codes worked. But does that explain why the fraud wasn't discovered until nine months later? It was as brazen and obvious as it was planned.

Incidentally, the supposed frequent flyer didn't benefit from his short-term wealth: Instead of squandering the money in the best expense-loving manner, he invested it in a securities account. And that has now been confiscated.