Attack of conscience or calculated move? French police questioning an armored car driver who made off with 2.5 million euros (US$3.73 million) are trying to find out why he gave himself up.
Does Toni Musulin, who became an Internet folk hero after he abandoned his van and made off with a cash delivery two weeks ago, hope to serve only a short jail term for a theft without violence and then return to his hidden loot?
Or, as his lawyer argued after police began questioning the suspect, did he turn himself to police in Monaco on Monday after realizing he was in over his head and that a life on the run was not really for him?
“Toni Muslin is a responsible man. He committed a misdemeanour, not a felony, and has decided to face up to what he had done,” defense counsel Christophe Cottet-Bretonnier said in Lyon, the scene of the crime.
“He’s a solitary person, who decided to cut his ties with his family ... but hideouts and a life on the run are not for him. I think that played a role. He seems relieved to have handed himself in,” Cottet-Bretonnier said.
A judicial official who accompanied Musulin on the four-hour drive back from Monaco to Lyon was more skeptical, warning he might not reveal the whereabouts of the missing cash.
“He is not going to cooperate. We have just spent four hours together and we know what his defense is going to be,” the official said.
“It’s a clear-cut case of theft. He faces a maximum of three years in prison,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding that police suspect the surrender was planned in advance.
When Musulin arrived in Lyon he confessed to stealing the money on Nov. 5 but still refused to say where he had been in the meantime and where the cash was stashed, a prosecutor said.
A separate inquiry will be opened to determine whether he had earlier this year falsely declared his Ferrari stolen in order to scam his insurance company, the official said.
Musulin had managed to buy the expensive sports car despite earning less than 2,000 euros a month in the job he had held for 10 years at the Swedish security firm Loomis.
The 39-year-old, who emptied his bank accounts and his apartment before the heist, made off with more than 11.6 million euros after driving off when two of his colleagues had stepped away from the vehicle.
Police recovered 9 million euros in an underground Lyon parking lot two days after his disappearance.
Hundreds of French Internet users have taken Musulin to their hearts as a hero of the common man in an era when the super-rich are blamed for the economic crisis, and some were standing by him after his surrender.
One group who may not be members of the fan club, however, are Musulin’s colleagues, four of whom face the sack for breaking security rules and inadvertently giving him a chance to escape, union representatives said.
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