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German border town mobilizes against student ‘drug trail’

Officials in the German city of Kaldenkirchen are mobilizing against German students taking "holiday excursions" through the border town to buy marijuana in the Netherlands, police announced on Tuesday.

Published: 24 June 2008 15:34 CEST

German border town mobilizes against student 'drug trail'

Dave? Dave's not here, man. Photo: DPA

The so-called “drug trail” aggravates the town’s residents, especially during school vacations, according to police in Viersen, in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Large groups of young “drug tourists” use the city to cross the border and buy grass at coffee shops. Police said they ride the train to the border and then walk the rest of the way to coffee shops on the other side, leaving trash, urine, and noise in their wake.

Authorities said they will warn students on the road to dissipation against hash addiction. Those students with addiction problems will be offered counseling.

Police plan to stop the traffic, informing the parents of juveniles, and fining older students.

German police swoop on gang of foreign dating scammers

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.

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,” police said.

The money was subsequently transferred to Black Axe in Nigeria “via financial agents”, authorities said.

In the process, 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), police said.

The suspects, who all held Nigerian citizenship and were aged between 29 and 53, were arrested in nationwide raids on Tuesday.

Law enforcement swooped on 19 properties, including both homes and asylum shelters, police said.

The Black Axe gang had “strict hierarchical structures under leadership in Nigeria” operating different territorial units, police said.

The group had a “significant influence” on politics and public administrations, in particular in Nigeria.

Globally, the gang’s main areas of operation were “human-trafficking, fraud, money-laundering, prostitution and drug-trafficking”.

Black Axe operated under the cover of the Neo Black Movement of Africa, an ostensibly charitable organisation used as “camouflage” for the gang’s structures.

The action against Black Axe was the first of its kind in Germany, police said.

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