In March/April 2018, when I was in and out of Leo Boer’s office a lot, I saw Frederik only when he came to bring me a cup of coffee. Hardly a word passed between Leo Boer and Frederik. And when Luna Vermeulen waltzed past Frederik’s office in her high heels, no greetings were exchanged. Even when I occasionally looked in on Frederik, the conversation didn’t really flow. You couldn’t say there was a “warm” relationship between the occupants of the second floor of Leo Boer’s Property office. 

Later I started to understand. In the period from 2016 to 2018, Frederik was working with a developer and trying to get Het Plaatje industrial estate off the ground. Due to his ineptitude, the losses were starting to pile up. Luna paid 3 million euros out of her own pocket to get the development of Het Plaatje on the right track, and was sick and tired of it. 

Extortion

In November 2019, the tensions between the Boer family and Frederik increased. On 1 November 2019, without Leo Boer’s authorisation, Frederik organised a meeting with the developer of Het Plaatje and the municipality. Leo Boer was very weak by then and Frederik apparently decided to act as he saw fit. There followed a meeting between Frederik, the Boer family, and the lawyer. The topics of the meeting were “not acting as he saw fit” and “we will be leasing Het Plaatje to De Hoop in 2020”. 

On 14 November, De Hoop received an e-mail from Frederik stating that Het Plaatje was no longer available for lease. When Leo Boer, irritated, confronted him about this on 22 November, Frederik responded angrily and left. He did take an order listing the extra costs incurred to complete Het Plaatje.

In the weeks that followed, Frederik calmed down a bit. On 21 January 2020 he testified in the case against Rabobank that was still dragging on since the stranding of the train of towed vessels in Jacobsbaai, South Africa in 2009. We will cover that topic in another episode. 

Then Frederik’s mood changed again. On 14 February 2020, Frederik sent an e-mail to the Boer family lawyer threatening to contact the lawyer for Rabobank “to tell the whole truth, so that the possible manipulation comes to light.” 

On 19 February 2020, the Boer family lawyer and Frederik met in Cape Town, South Africa. During a dinner with their wives, he said that he had been making copies of important documents for the past seven years. When the lawyer asked what documents those were, Frederik did not want to tell. He said he would hold his cards “close to his chest”.

In exchange for these documents, before the end of March 2020 Frederik wanted Leo Boer to give him a sworn signed statement that Frederik would receive €45,000 on Leo Boer’s death. If not, he would contact Rabobank and give them the documents he had in his possession. 

The lawyer was surprised, because the documents Frederik was talking about had been drafted by him.

Lawyer: “What’s in these documents?”

Frederik: “Not telling.” 

And he continued, “I don’t approve of how Luna Vermeulen treated her husband during his illness.”

According to the lawyer, Frederik then became slanderous, aggressive, and venomous.

“Why do you want €45,000?”

“That was promised to me by Leo because of my 41 years at the company. I have proof.”

“Can you give me this proof?”

“No.”

Consultation with the Boer family revealed that no money had been promised to Frederik. Frederik, who was 77 when he stepped down, had been tagging along with Leo Boer at a good salary for 12 years. That was a considerable addition to his pension. And yet, Frederik wanted more money. 

Company accounts held hostage

After Leo Boer’s death, an apparently embittered Frederik held the Boer companies hostage for eight months. For eight months he had access and insight into company correspondence. It is not clear whether he used the information for his own profit or sent it to third parties, including Leo’s disinherited son. At the same time, Nabod started lawsuits to try to secure his inheritance, and he might have found some extra information useful. 

What is certain is that Frederik wanted money in exchange for releasing company records from the cloud. As the lawyers put it, this is a primitive form of ransomware. 

A lawsuit was filed, with papers served on 30 July 2020. In the days before this, there was consultation between Frederik, Frederik’s son, and Leo Boer’s disinherited son who lives in Australia. This shows they were in cahoots. The confirmation is in the transcriptions provided below. 

First, there is the following telephone call between the three parties. They mention that the passwords were hacked by Frederik and his son.

X: Hi L[redacted], [redacted] here. First, condolences on the passing of your father. Can we call you on Sunday? It looks like I’m going to get tangled up in the case about the shipyard’s Apple accounts. I got a call from Luna and I’ve had an e-mail from the lawyer [redacted] with an attached draft summons for my father. We’d like to hear your side of the story too before I answer the e-mail. Yours, [redacted]

[redacted]: Haha how is it that we’re in touch again after 30 years don’t worry Monday your dad will have a lawyer and i told luna that i have all the passwords and she can ask my lawyer for them but yeah, let’s talk

[redacted]: Great, how late NL time can we call you?

[redacted]: I’m six hours ahead of you so just call when you wake up

[redacted]: I’ll call you at 12:00

These conversations took place between 17 and 19 July 2020. Nabod used the information about the hacked passwords to harass Luna Vermeulen:

dear luna as I indicated before unfortunately i cant help you any more and mr [redacted] doesnt have a password the correct login information is with my lawyer if you want to change it please contact gmw lawyers kind regard [redacted]

On 17 July, Luna Vermeulen’s lawyer put the thumb screws on Frederik’s son: 

Dear Mr [redacted],

I understand that Luna Vermeulen, director of L.J. Boer Sliedrecht Beheer B.V., spoke with you by telephone about the sharing of usernames and passwords for L.J. Boer Vastgoed B.V. and L.J. Boer Beheer B.V. With regard to the telephone conversation you said that your father was not very handy with those matters, so you then made the request by e-mail that the information should be put in an e-mail. Within the hour, my client discovered that the usernames and passwords had once again been changed. Your father apparently is not concerned about this. Perhaps it was merely coincidence. I ask that you tell me if you are involved in this in any way and, if so, in what way. If and insofar as that is the case, I declare you liable for all resulting damage and loss. I attach the summons for preliminary relief proceedings that will be filed shortly. A suit does not appear to me to be in the interest of the parties, but the position of your father leaves my client no other choice. If you can do something about this to the effect that this situation can be resolved by return of post, I would be very grateful for your intervention.

Yours faithfully, 

Frederik’s family started getting nervous. On 19 July his son decided not to pass the information on to Nabod. He also e-mailed the lawyer that he would cooperate to restore the passwords his father hacked. See the e-mails below:  

Dear [redacted]

I’m sorry to inform you that this evening, we as a family decided not to proceed as we discussed with you this morning. See below the e-mail that I sent Mr Koets this evening. My father will call you early in the morning and explain.

We wish you all the best with the settlement of your inheritance.

If you have any questions, feel free to call or e-mail.

Yours,

[redacted]

Dear Mr [redacted],

I am writing to inform you that I have spoken with my father in detail about the accounts and passwords for L.J. [Boer] Vastgoed B.V. and L.J. Boer Sliedrecht Beheer B.V. After going into the situation in depth and consulting with Mr Rene Esselink Relles Computers I have been able to get a picture. My tentative conclusion is that a lot of this is due to misunderstandings and lack of expertise on both sides. 

It is not my father’s intention, and never has been, to hold accounts and passwords hostage as you state in the preliminary relief proceedings. I determined this from the conversations I’ve had with him over the past weeks while investigating the accounts he has been using on his various Apple devices. 

Now that this is all clear to me, I would like to propose the following to L.J. Boer Vastgoed B.V. and L.J. Boer Sliedrecht Beheer B.V. to help restore the accounts.

It’s very important for all the parties to come together for this because personal and business accounts have been used interchangeably. Both parties ensure that the Apple devices on which the account Leovastgoed@gmail.com has been used or is installed. We will also need access to a telephone containing my father’s old business number (apparently now used by Luna’s daughter) and Luna Vermeulen’s mobile phone. Further access to the Google/gmail account [redacted] is also necessary. I will make sure my father’s devices are present as well.

I propose that we invite Mr [redacted] as IT expert to achieve the desired result of separating the personal and business data. He also has a lot of experience with the workings of the IT equipment used at the company.

I emphasise specifically the action of helping restore the accounts, but cannot make any personal guarantees or be held liable in any way whatsoever. The parties, specifically your client and my father [redacted] are in my humble opinion not competent in IT matters and may have performed actions of which I have no [v…]. I trust that you will understand this and will therefore immediately withdraw the allegation you have made against me.

I hope that you and your client find this proposal acceptable and that this way we will avoid preliminary relief proceedings.

Looking forward to your speedy reply.

Yours sincerely,

[redacted]   

On 22 July, Frederik’s son wrote to him that he didn’t want to have anything more to do with the hacking: 

“Pa, take responsibility and get me out of this. My family and I can do without this.”

Subject: No further connection or involvement

Hi Pa,

I understand from [redacted] that you have talked to a lawyer and are going to request a postponement of the preliminary relief proceedings. I demand that you or your lawyer immediately write an e-mail to Mr Koets making it clear that I have no involvement in this dispute. 

I got dragged into this by you because, with the best of intentions, I wanted to help you supposedly get rid of the Apple account [redacted]. Unfortunately, due to major incompetence/ignorance by you and Luna Vermeulen, this all turned out to be much more complicated than [redacted] or I ever realised. 

So, again, take responsibility and get me out of this. My family and I can do without this!

Yours,

[redacted]  

Upon which the father asked his lawyer “to leave his son out of it, because he only wanted to help his father.”

Will you please, as your first task, [redacted]

Preferably today, make it clear that my son [redacted] only had good intentions to help his father and has no further responsibility regarding this problem

Yours faithfully [redacted]

And there ends this episode.