Former footballer, Hiannick Kamba has been jailed for 46 months after being found guilty of faking his own death.
Kamba, who was a youth player at Schalke 04, was believed to have died in 2016.
It was reported that he had been killed in a car crash in Congo.
His wife was paid €1.2m (just over £1m) by the company with whom the couple had a life insurance policy, while one of his former clubs – VfB Huls, who play in North Rhine-Westphalia – even published an obituary after the player’s apparent death in a car crash
It read, per the Metro: “He represented the ideas and values of our club like few others. His demise will leave a big gap. Hiannick is undoubtedly a bitter sporting loss for us, but primarily we will miss it as a fellow human being.”
However, Hiannick was later discovered alive and well in Ruhr, Germany, working as a chemical technician at an energy supplier in 2019.
He told authorities he was abandoned by friends overnight in Congo in January 2016 and left without documents, money and a cell phone.
Kamba came through Schalke ranks with Bayern Munich goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, playing a number of games at youth level, before spending the remainder of his career at a number of lower-league clubs and hanging up his boots in 2016.
