The Volker Eckel case: how GC fell for an unskilled worker from the Black Forest

The name Volker Eckel had been known to Swiss football fans since 2009. Flashback. On Monday, April 27 of that year, Blick dropped the bomb: “Investor reaches out to GC. The first tranche of 150 million francs should arrive on Thursday.” A day later, Blick followed up with a photo of the alleged investor: “That’s him!” But a day later the whole thing is over: “GC investor is bankrupt!”

Eckel posed as Sheik Mohamed Al Faisal

How did Blick know all this? The week before, a man and a woman had contacted the sports desk. They would have an incredible story to tell. An investor from the Arab region is willing to invest an incredible amount of 300 million francs in GC. To prove that the story is true, they would invite an undercover reporter from Blick on behalf of the investor to the contract negotiations at the Baur au Lac in Zurich.

The deal goes through. And that is why a Blick journalist, unknown in the sports scene, suddenly finds himself in the hotel restaurant at a table with GC Vice President Erich Vogel, CFO Heinz Spross and the alleged investor Volker Eckel, who calls himself Sheikh Mohamed Al Faisal. The contract was actually signed on April 22, 2009.

A few days later it became clear to the WG bosses: Eckel was broke and a cheat. He is not king of Arabia, but a worker from the Black Forest. His fake luxury life? One big lie.

“He clearly escaped into a fantasy world”

Back to director Dani Levy. When he read the article in Spiegel four years later, it immediately became clear to him that this could be material for him. But due to other projects, the Volker Eckel case quickly fades into the background. Until Corona comes. Levy has a lot of time to think and remember Eckel. “Then I thought: let’s make a series of this story.” It is the starting signal for an eight-part series that will appear on Paramount+ at the end of 2022 under the title ‘The Sheik’.

But what fascinated him so much about the character of Volker Eckel? “He was not a classic con artist, but a simple man. Usually, cheaters aim to enrich themselves financially. But he was probably a pure storyteller, a fairytale uncle who enjoyed deception and transformation and who apparently escaped into a fantasy world.

A fairytale uncle who fooled GC. After it emerged that Eckel was bankrupt, WG chairman Roger Berbig explained: “When I first heard about this offer, I thought there was a one percent chance. When I saw Volker Eckel, the rate was one per thousand. It was always clear to all of us in the Board of Directors: so many things do not fit together. This can’t work.” But: “GC is not in the financial position to simply turn down an offer of 300 million.”

Eckel pressed the right buttons

For Levy, the fact that GC fell for the imposter is no coincidence. «You hear what you want to hear and create your own desires and wishes. When something really beautiful happens, we are all absolutely ready to turn our thoughts away. And once you’re in it, it’s already too late because you’ve already fallen in love with this dream and you’re acting stupid because of it. The very thought that none of this could be true is too depressing for us to allow it.”

That’s why GC was desperately clutching at straws, even though it was clear that a lot of things couldn’t be right. Levy: “Eckel was actually a worthless con man. He worked amateurishly and more or less improvised. But he pushed all the right buttons for his counterpart and turned people’s heads with the promise of endless money.

GC doesn’t think it’s funny

When Levy started filming the material, he thought long and hard about whether he should talk to Eckel. “I then decided not to do it. I didn’t want to involve him, but rather create a fictional story based on his case.”

But the 66-year-old wanted to contact GC. “We approached them because we wanted to mention GC GC in the series. But they forbade us to do that. I thought that was a shame and also not very confident, because the whole thing was not only embarrassing, but also somehow sweet.”

While working on the project, Levy and his team then worked extensively on Eckel and his character. They kept wondering how a man cheats and lies to people with his eyes wide open and then everyone runs towards the abyss. “Our explanation: there must be pathological reasons. Eckel probably suffers from a mental disorder.”

Is there a deceiver in all of us?

In 2012, Eckel was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in Germany for five counts of fraud. In 2015, he said in an SRF documentary: “I was no longer in reality. Today I feel partly ashamed.” It is unclear how he is doing now. When Blick spoke to him a few years ago, he explained that he did not have long to live.

One question remains to be answered: Mr. Levy, is there an impostor in all of us? “Certainly yes. We live in a time when we are almost forced to do this. On social media we idealize ourselves and make our happiness dependent on whether we get a thumbs up or not. We have long lived in a time when published self-optimization has reached the mainstream of society.”