The article was about a fraudulent mortician, who, for cost reasons, held a memorial service before the body had actually been cremated and buried. He would eventually do that, fulfilling his contract, but people where attending a service for a loved one, whose body was still in cold storage.
From a law perspective this is an interesting case, because the damage done - fooling the relatives, that the ashes in the urn are of their beloved one - is rather intangible. But apparently the German law accounts for that and he was convicted.
Art direction by Jan Kny.