The German police say they have arrested 11 suspected members of a Nigerian mafia group behind a large-scale dating scam in Germany.
The Black Axe gang was involved internationally in “multiple areas of criminal activity”, with a focus in Germany on romance scams and money-laundering, Bavarian police said in a statement.
According to the statement, the action against Black Axe is the first of its kind in Germany.
The dating trick was a “modern form of marriage fraud”, police said.
“Using false identities, the fraudsters for example signalled their intention to marry and in the course of further contact repeatedly demand money under various pretexts,” the police said.
The money was subsequently transferred to Black Axe in Nigeria “via financial agents”, the report local media reports quoted German authorities as saying.
According to the reports, the gang used a “commodity-based money laundering” scheme where products, often with a seeming “charitable purpose” were bought and delivered to Nigeria.
Some 450 cases of romance scamming had been reported in the region of Bavaria in 2023 alone, with the damages rising to 5.3 million euros ($5.7 million), the police said.
The statement added that the suspects were arrested in nationwide raids on Tuesday and that all the suspects held Nigerian citizenship and were aged between 29 and 53.
The Black Axe gang, according to the German police, operates globally and that the main areas of operation were “human-trafficking, fraud, money-laundering, prostitution and drug-trafficking”.
GIK/APA