Over more than a decade: Over a dozen criminal and civil proceedings against two perpetrators who have engaged in systematic cyberstalking, pornography, honour-related offences, contact violations, and the illegal publication of intimate data since January 2015. What began with harassing messages and comment section trolling grew into an organized hate campaign with its own blog, hundreds of articles, and pornographic photo montages. The legal response includes a house search, a brief arrest, contact bans, protection orders, binding convictions, and the judicial documentation of connections between the obsessive stalkers and the «obsessive» (quote: Basel-Stadt Criminal Court) Tamedia journalist (not yet final).
A few weeks after the Zug Landammann ceremony, the first harassing messages arrive. An older man – later identified as one of the two main perpetrators – makes unsolicited contact, initially posing as a supporter and offering his alleged legal expertise. What appears at first to be concern turns out to be the beginning of a persecution campaign that would last over a decade.
Perpetrator 1 becomes increasingly demanding and aggressive. Using alternating pseudonyms and his real name, he dominates comment sections in various media, posing as an insider and spreading half-truths. He follows a pattern he has already applied to other public women. He harasses the then Zug cantonal councillor with anonymous troll accounts while simultaneously offering himself as her legal advisor and representative. To third parties, he even claims to be her "lawyer". Perpetrator 2 – a considerably younger man – joins in and begins filing baseless complaints. The use of the legal system as continued stalking, coupled with anonymous posturing on social media. Non-commencements and discontinuations multiply. For a long time, all at state expense. The two stalkers present themselves as poor.
Following persistent harassment, a court issues a communication ban against the first perpetrator. This does not deter him: He continues his activities through third parties and anonymous accounts and is convicted for the first time for violation of an official order (Art. 292 SCC) by penal order. In parallel, he files complaints about extortion and coercion against Spiess-Hegglin; the public prosecutor's office refuses to pursue them.
The harassment reaches a new level: The two perpetrators launch an anonymous, single-issue denunciation blog called "Shameleaks" with over 200 hateful articles, pornographic photo montages, and systematic character assassination. Spiess-Hegglin finds digital forensic traces on the hate blog leading to the older stalker and files a criminal complaint. The public prosecutor's office of See-Oberland opens an investigation. A house search follows, along with police interviews. From seized emails between the perpetrators and other data, the extent of coordination is first documented as court evidence.
The Hinwil District Court issues a contact ban and a protection order against one of the main perpetrators; before this, he is briefly arrested by the cantonal police.
The connections between the stalkers and media professionals are documented. Civil lawsuit for personality violation is filed.
The public prosecutor's office of See-Oberland brings charges against both main perpetrators for pornography (Art. 197 SCC), coercion as stalking (Art. 181 SCC), threats (Art. 180 SCC), multiple defamation, libel, insults, attempted insigation to unauthorized data acquisition, and violation of court orders (Art. 292 SCC). Multiple penal orders are issued for repeated contact violations.
The Zurich High Court confirms in its judgment NP230026-O/U the first-instance judgment of the Hinwil District Court of 6 July 2023, thereby creating Switzerland's first precedent on cyberstalking. The court holds: The systematic digital pursuit via 24 online channels over a period of seven years (2016–2023) with a total of over 1,053 posts constitutes a serious personality violation within the meaning of Art. 28b SCC. On the perpetrator's main Facebook account alone, 452 posts were documented between 2020 and 2022; in September 2021, 165 posts appeared – up to 13 per day.
The High Court expressly rejects the freedom of expression argument: The right to free expression does not justify systematic harassment and defamation of an individual over years. The perpetrator had also attempted to hack the affected person's Facebook account and contacted organizations and media to discredit her.
The court confirms the six-year speech ban (with threat of Art. 292 SCC) as well as damages of CHF 2,000 plus 5% interest from 23 August 2021. The judgment is groundbreaking for the legal classification of cyberstalking in Switzerland and demonstrates that coordinated digital pursuit campaigns across multiple platforms do not fall under the protection of freedom of expression.
The Pfäffikon District Court convicts both main perpetrators: one for pornography (Art. 197 SCC), the other for pornography and coercion. Decisive for the pornography convictions were pornographic montages – collages created without Spiess-Hegglin's consent and distributed by the perpetrators via their blog – a phenomenon discussed internationally as "non-consensual intimate imagery" and for which many countries are still seeking legal answers. All honour-related offences – defamation, libel, insults – are discontinued: They have expired due to statute of limitations because the perpetrators dragged out proceedings through constant postponements (alternating sick leaves) and procedural tactics over years. The Zurich High Court confirms the civil judgment against one perpetrator for personality violation as final.
The Hinwil District Court rules in the civil case regarding the illegal publication of Shameleaks data in favour of Spiess-Hegglin. The court finds that the case constitutes a personality-violating media campaign; among the established violation categories are explicitly pornographic montages of the plaintiff. The judgment is thus one of the first civil decisions in Switzerland to qualify fabricated sexualized imagery without consent as a personality violation – at a time when the international community is still searching for legal frameworks for such cases. At the same time, further penal orders against one of the perpetrators become final – including convictions for multiple defamations on Twitter and violation of the communication ban.
On 17 March 2026, the Zug Cantonal Court issues a super-provisional injunction (ES 2026 248) at the request of Spiess-Hegglin: The stalker is ordered to delete two specific defamatory passages from his 345-page blog article and to refrain from distributing them elsewhere – under penalty of Art. 292 SCC. Exactly one week later, on 24 March 2026, the stalker reposts the entire blog article including the prohibited passages – via his secondary account on X and via his Facebook profile. This is not a mere failure to delete, but the active, renewed dissemination of judicially prohibited content across multiple channels, in full knowledge of the super-provisional injunction.
The Zug Cantonal Court dismisses the civil lawsuit filed by the convicted cyberstalker against Jolanda Spiess in full (Decision EV 2025 5). The stalker had attempted to silence Spiess-Hegglin through a civil lawsuit: He demanded a comprehensive speech ban, deletion of all posts about him, a ban on the podcast "Drachentöten", and CHF 10,000 in compensation. The court declined to consider the majority of the ten motions – due to lack of specificity. What was substantively examined was dismissed: The court confirmed that the designation "stalker" corresponds to the truth, and expressly recognised Spiess-Hegglin's right, as a stalking victim, to inform the public about an "officially confirmed threat situation". Even where individual statements were technically qualified as personality violations, they were justified by an overriding public and private interest. All costs – CHF 7,000 in court fees and approximately CHF 16,000 in party compensation (including a court-ordered deposit, as the plaintiff still owes over CHF 20,000 from prior convictions) – were imposed on the plaintiff. Particularly telling: The stalker had initially been granted legal aid – i.e. the right to litigate at taxpayer expense. Only when the court was alerted to his real estate holdings was this privilege revoked. What began as a continuation of the stalking obsession in legal guise ended with complete dismissal and substantial cost consequences.
Two appeal proceedings are pending at the High Court. In spring 2026, Spiess-Hegglin files a further criminal complaint – for the first time also based on the new stalking offence (Art. 181b SCC, in force since 1 January 2026), alongside disobedience of official orders (Art. 292 SCC) and honour-related offences. At the time of the complaint, the stalker is simultaneously violating at least three court orders. The website shameleaks.com remains fully online; none of the 101 blog posts judicially established as personality-violating have been deleted. The legal proceedings continue.
What began in January 2015 with seemingly harmless messages from a retired man turned out to be the start of a pursuit campaign lasting over a decade, organized in a division of labour. Two main perpetrators – one provided pseudo-legal arguments, the other technical implementation and distribution – jointly operated the "Shameleaks" platform, on which they published over 200 personality-violating articles, including pornographic photo montages, fabricated interviews, and systematic character assassination. In parallel, they maintained a network of fake accounts on Twitter and Facebook that were regularly renamed but could be identified as identical based on the unchanging Twitter ID. Years before the blog, the perpetrators had created an atmosphere of permanent harassment in comment sections, on social media, and through third parties. A compulsory measures court determined that this was "Internet stalking". The fact that this campaign continues to this day despite communication bans, contact bans, a house search, an arrest, and binding convictions makes this one of the best-documented cases of organized cyberstalking in Switzerland.
Why are these cyberstalkers even relevant – two obsessive men who have pursued a single woman for over a decade? Because their case exemplarily shows how digital hate is organized. What appears at first glance to be the isolated activities of two disturbed individuals turns out on closer inspection to be a node in a network where the most diverse actors find themselves in hate and mutually reinforce each other.
The investigations and case files document a direct connection between the convicted stalkers and the journalist Michele Binswanger convicted in the Tamedia complex (not final). Confidential court documents from the ongoing Binswanger proceedings appeared on the blog operated by the stalkers. The journalist, for her part, drew on one of the convicted stalkers as a source for her book and published material on her blog that reached her from people who maintain close contact both with her and with the stalkers. This created a cycle in which each actor referred to the others: The tabloid media provided reporting material and public legitimation. The stalkers picked up this material, enriched it with fabrications and intimate details, and spread it via their blog and dozens of fake accounts. The journalist, in turn, relied on material from the stalkers, gave it the appearance of journalistic respectability, and fed it back into the public media sphere. A woman who had previously gained Spiess-Hegglin's trust provided internal information that further fueled the cycle. An apparent social game in which people found each other who had nothing in common except their shared object of hatred. The escalation cycle between anonymous social media posts and media amplification was systematically played out. It later emerged that the woman who initially gained Spiess-Hegglin's trust as a supposed friend has maintained the closest connections to decision-makers in Switzerland's largest media houses for years.
Digital violence does not work because individual perpetrators are particularly powerful. It works because the Internet provides an infrastructure in which hate can easily be bundled – across social classes, political camps, and motivations. Media campaigns and anonymous incitement interlock, legitimize, and reinforce each other, and can be used to eliminate and decompose individual persons.
In 2020, there existed a private Facebook chat group of women who exchanged information with each other about ongoing proceedings and media coverage. A participant gained Spiess-Hegglin's trust and passed parts of the chat on – to the stalkers, to the journalist convicted in the Tamedia complex (not final), or to both. Spiess-Hegglin disputes the authenticity of the passages attributed to her.
In May 2023 – just days before her own conviction for defamation at the Basel-Stadt criminal court – journalist Michele Binswanger published parts of this chat under the title "Hateleaks" on her specially created blog. The publication served to reverse the narrative: Spiess-Hegglin was to be portrayed as the orchestrator of a smear campaign, the Tagi journalist convicted for intentional lying and knowing misstatement (not final) as the victim. This framing was adopted by various media – including the Tamedia group itself.
The facts tell a different story. The only truly hateful utterances in the chat, which was by no means conceived as a hate group against the Tamedia journalist, did not come from Spiess-Hegglin but from two women who later turned out to be close confidants of the journalist – they were present as companions at her appeal hearing in Basel. These same women had previously been expelled from the association #NetzCourage for actions contrary to its purpose. They have and do exchange information with the convicted stalkers. Whether they deliberately provoked from within to generate usable material against Spiess-Hegglin cannot be conclusively proven – the pattern suggests it.
The judgment of the Zurich High Court of 8 July 2024 (NP230026-O/U) is a groundbreaking precedent on cyberstalking: The court confirmed with binding legal force that the systematic pursuit of a person via a network of over 20 digital channels – including Facebook profiles, Twitter accounts, YouTube channels, and blogs, operated under alternating pseudonyms – constitutes an unlawful personality violation under Art. 28 SCC. The perpetrator had stalked the plaintiff for years via digital communication channels, inflicted psychological and social violence on her, and repeatedly publicly called her a liar. The court expressly rejected the defendant's claim that the plaintiff, as a public figure, was obliged to tolerate such statements: The sheer volume, frequency, and obsessiveness of the posts exceed any measure of permissible criticism.
This judgment is of considerable significance for Swiss legal practice. It clarifies for the first time at the level of a cantonal high court that cyberstalking – the systematic pursuit via digital channels – is actionable under civil law as a personality violation, even if individual statements taken in isolation might still fall within the scope of freedom of expression. What matters is the totality of the behaviour: intensity, duration, and the targeted focus on a single person. The judgment thus creates a directly applicable basis for cyberstalking victims seeking civil law protection.
The proceedings required legal tools that scarcely existed in this combination before: De-anonymization via IP addresses and platform information, house search with seizure of digital evidence, police arrest, contact ban, court speech bans under Art. 28a SCC, criminally enforceable communication bans, and finally convictions for pornography (Art. 197 SCC), coercion as stalking (Art. 181 SCC), and systematic violation of court orders (Art. 292 SCC). The fact that in the Shameleaks case all honour-related offences – defamation, libel, insults – expired despite prosecution because the perpetrators delayed proceedings through procedural tactics and alternating sick leaves, is part of the bitter balance sheet. The fact that nevertheless within one year three judgments were rendered against the same perpetrators – both criminal and civil – shows that coordinated cyberstalking is legally actionable today, even if the system offers perpetrators too many opportunities to force expiration.
Characteristic of this complex is the persistence of the perpetrators. Despite police contact bans, criminally enforceable speech bans, and initial convictions, both continued their activities – under new pseudonyms, on new platforms, with undiminished intensity. One perpetrator was convicted multiple times alone for violation of court orders under Art. 292 SCC. In March 2026, this pattern reached a new level: On 17 March 2026, the Zug Cantonal Court issued a super-provisional injunction ordering the stalker to immediately delete two specific defamatory passages. Exactly one week later, on 24 March 2026, he redistributed the entire blog article including the judicially prohibited passages – via his secondary account on X and via Facebook. Not a mere failure to delete, but an active, demonstrative redistribution of judicially prohibited content. At the time of the criminal complaint of 10 April 2026, he was simultaneously violating at least three court orders. This repeat offender status demonstrates that digital violence cannot be stopped by individual sanctions, but only by consistent, long-term legal prosecution on multiple legal levels simultaneously.
Parallel to their stalking activities, the two main perpetrators systematically instrumentalized the criminal justice system against Spiess-Hegglin herself. Between 2015 and 2026, a total of 72 criminal proceedings were opened against Jolanda Spiess-Hegglin – from various sources, yet the two stalkers account for the largest share: Perpetrator B alone launched over 23 complaints directly, Perpetrator A over 10. Additionally, Perpetrator B acted as representative for at least eight other persons, all of whom filed identical complaints on the same day. The charges ranged from extortion and coercion to false accusation to unfaithful business dealings – and were almost without exception baseless.
The result speaks for itself: Of 72 proceedings, over 20 ended with non-commencement (the public prosecutor's office did not pursue the complaint at all), over 25 with discontinuation, 7 complaints against this were dismissed, and in the two cases where a hearing actually took place, an acquittal followed. The only result against Spiess-Hegglin in 72 proceedings: a violation for disobedience of an official order – fine CHF 300. This flood of proceedings is no accident and no side aspect of the hate campaign. It is its own instrument of harassment: Each complaint forces a response, binds resources, creates psychological pressure, and causes costs – regardless of whether it is justified or not. The fact that Perpetrator A engaged several prominent, SVP-affiliated legal representatives for individual complaints from 2022 onwards shows the degree of professionalization of this strategy and the politicization of the narrative. The convicted personality violators and stalkers invoked freedom of expression. That their complaints failed changes nothing about their effect as a weapon.
On 7 April 2026, the Zug Cantonal Court dismissed the civil lawsuit filed by the convicted cyberstalker against Jolanda Spiess in full (Decision EV 2025 5). The stalker – the same person already convicted with binding legal force by the Zurich High Court for systematic personality violation via 24 digital channels – now attempted to silence Spiess-Hegglin through a civil lawsuit. He demanded a comprehensive speech ban, deletion of all posts concerning him, a ban on the podcast "Drachentöten", and CHF 10,000 in compensation.
The judgment is remarkable in several respects. First, the court confirms that the designation "stalker" corresponds to the truth – based on the binding judgment of the Zurich High Court, which documented the systematic digital pursuit over seven years with 452 Facebook posts on the main account, a total of over 1,053 posts, and up to 13 posts per day. Second, it expressly recognises that Spiess-Hegglin, as a stalking victim, has a right to inform the public about an "officially confirmed threat situation" – including in pointed form. Third, it establishes that even where individual statements are technically qualified as personality violations, the overriding public and private interest in raising awareness about cyberstalking justifies those statements. And fourth, the plaintiff's compensation claim is dismissed because the contested statements do not reach the "objective severity" required for an award.
The case illustrates a pattern that extends far beyond the individual case: perpetrator-victim reversal through civil lawsuit. A convicted stalker attempts to silence his victim through the justice system – using precisely the legal system originally designed to protect victims. Particularly telling: The plaintiff had initially been granted legal aid – i.e. the right to litigate at taxpayer expense. Only when Spiess-Hegglin's lawyer alerted the court to the plaintiff's real estate holdings was this privilege revoked. What began as a continuation of the stalking obsession in legal guise – funded by taxpayer money – ended with complete dismissal and substantial cost consequences: CHF 7,000 in court fees and approximately CHF 16,000 in party compensation, including a court-ordered deposit, as the plaintiff still owes over CHF 20,000 from prior convictions.
The pattern of perpetrator-victim reversal is not limited to the convicted stalker. The Tamedia journalist Michele Binswanger, convicted of defamation, employs the same strategy: In a public fundraising appeal, she portrays herself as the victim of a "targeted campaign" intended to "destroy her as a journalist" – while entirely ignoring the fact that she herself was convicted in two instances for knowing lies and intentional false statements. She frames the proceedings as an attack on press freedom, when in reality they concern protection against defamation. The reversal is structurally identical: The perpetrator sues, the victim is expected to be silent.
For those affected by stalking and digital violence, the Zug judgment creates an important foundation: A court has made clear that victims cannot be compelled to remain silent when reporting documented violence. The public documentation of stalking is not a personality attack on the perpetrator, but a legitimate means of self-protection and prevention.
The Hinwil District Court found in the Shameleaks civil judgment of May 2025 that the 101 sued blog posts in their totality constitute a personality-violating media campaign – regardless of whether individual posts taken in isolation might still be deemed permissible. The court categorized the violations into seven groups: false attribution of mental illness and addiction, obsessive accusations of lying, accusations of media attention-seeking, manipulation of third parties, general hate tirades ("no IQ present", "left-wing top bitch", "fairy-tale and lying aunt"), attributions of incitement, and economic boycott calls combined with defamatory statements. In addition – sanctioned both criminally and civilly – pornographic photo montages in which the plaintiff's face was placed on the bodies of porn actresses, as well as a fabricated interview with her husband. The court expressly held that for the assessment of the media campaign, the unlawfulness of each individual post is not decisive: The totality of volume, frequency, and obsessive focus on a single person constitutes the personality violation.
Over ten years of legal proceedings – from the first harassment in January 2015 through de-anonymization to binding convictions – document for the first time in Switzerland comprehensively how organized cyberstalking can be legally processed. The Shameleaks civil judgment also establishes that operators of anonymous hate platforms are personally and jointly liable – even when roles are divided as a division of labour. The proceedings thus create a practical blueprint for affected persons, law firms, and law enforcement authorities. At the same time, the case demonstrates what time, financial, and emotional effort is demanded of victims – over a decade of struggle on multiple legal levels simultaneously – and how urgently structural improvements in victim protection against digital violence are needed.