On 7 April 1994 the property developer Jürgen Schneider disappeared. His real estate empire collapsed and left debts of about three billion dollars. Craftsmen were left with unpaid bills of more than 50 million marks. Hilmar Kopper, the head of Deutsche Bank, called this sum Peanuts. The word became the Unwort des Jahres, the non-word of the year, for 1994. At his trial in Frankfurt in 1997, Schneider confessed. For a shopping complex in his home city, he had counted stairs, corridors and cellars as rentable space. On that basis he had forecast 57 million marks in rent. Viele Angaben waren objektiv falsch, he said. Many figures were objectively false. He also said that the responsible loan officer had never asked further questions. At Christmas 1997 the regional court sentenced him to six years and nine months in prison.