More than €100,000 intended to improve the final weeks of life for terminally ill hospice patients was stolen and spent on luxury watches, designer goods, and cash withdrawals by two cousins from Zaandam, a Dutch court has ruled.

The money was taken from the support fund of the Willem Holtrop Hospice in Ermelo, which exists to pay for basic comforts for dying patients, including music therapy, flowers, and furnishings for patient rooms. Instead, the fund was emptied in little more than a week.

The theft was discovered in May last year when treasurer Marcel Celie noticed that the hospice account had been drained. Transactions showed spending at luxury department stores and repeated large cash withdrawals. Celie immediately blocked the debit cards and alerted the authorities.

“I saw that payments had been made with our debit card for very large sums at luxury stores in Amsterdam and Zaandam,” Celie said at the time, as cited by NOS.

As reported by Gelderlander, investigators established that the suspects, identified as JG and MG, had obtained the hospice’s debit card and PIN through a phishing scam. Using stolen credentials, they retrieved the card from Celie’s mailbox in Harderwijk, raised the spending limit via the Rabobank app, and blew the lot.

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Over roughly 10 days, the men burned through hospice funds in Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Zaandam, purchasing luxury items from brands such as Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Prada, and Dior, alongside large ATM withdrawals. The spending only stopped once the account was blocked.

Police traced the suspects using CCTV footage from luxury stores. Both cousins were arrested in Zaandam at the end of September. A third suspect, a 23-year-old man from the same city, was arrested two weeks later.

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In court, the cousins claimed they did not know the money belonged to a hospice. Judges rejected that claim, stating that the men’s actions were “very abusive” and amounted to a serious violation not only of property rights but of the hospice’s sense of security.

The court sentenced both men to just 1 year in prison, 251 days of which were suspended. They were also ordered to complete 80 and 120 hours of community service, respectively.

Although Rabobank reimbursed the hospice several months after the theft, the court ruled that the cousins must repay the full stolen amount of €109,375.