Two Women Sentenced for False Statements About Pilnacek Laptop
A court in Vienna sentenced Karin Wurm and a former roommate to conditional prison terms for lying about the whereabouts of Christian Pilnacek's laptop.
In a reopened false-statement trial linked to the Pilnacek case, a Vienna court issued conditional prison sentences: 14 months for Karin Wurm, the deceased justice-section chief's girlfriend, and five months for his former roommate, each with a three-year probation period. The retrial followed the Oberlandesgericht Wien's decision to cancel an earlier diversion based on general-preventive considerations. Both women admitted the false statements, which involved misleading police about the laptop's final location and its subsequent transfer to a third party.
The Sankt Pölten prosecutor added accusations of ongoing unlawful appropriation and data misuse; only Wurm was found guilty of the former, while both were cleared of data-protection violations. The judgments remain non-final pending possible appeals.
Why it matters
The case highlights judicial scrutiny of evidence handling and false testimony in high-profile investigations.
In this story
