Facts
The appellant [X.] was found guilty by the High Court of the Canton of Zurich on November 14, 2005 of multiple counts of fraud (Art. 146 para. 1 SCC) and multiple counts of forgery of documents (Art. 251 no. 1 SCC) as well as other offences, and was sentenced to a custodial sentence of 2 years, 11 months and 16 days. The appellant then filed a federal nullity appeal against this judgment. The facts of the case can be summarized as follows: - The appellant submitted various forged documents to the Deutsche Bank in order to obtain a mortgage loan for the acquisition of two condominiums in Berlin, in order to misrepresent his financial situation as being better than it actually was. - Based on these forged documents, the Deutsche Bank granted the appellant a mortgage loan of around CHF 187,000, which the appellant did not service. - Furthermore, the appellant forged information from the debt collection register by removing the note "Valid from 15.1.02".Considerations
The Federal Supreme Court upheld the judgment of the High Court: 1. Deceit within the meaning of the offence of fraud (Art. 146 para. 1 SCC) is present, as the appellant submitted a multitude of forged documents to deceive the bank about his financial situation. Even though the criterion of verifiability is also relevant for lies and special machinations according to the more recent case law, the element of deceit is generally fulfilled if the…