Weed plantation found at Neuss drug clinic

Around 100 huge cannabis plants have been dug up and removed from the grounds of an addiction clinic in Neuss, near Düsseldorf.

Published: 15 August 2008 12:42 CEST

Weed plantation found at Neuss drug clinic

Photo:DPA

Police spokesman Willi Arnold told the Express newspaper, “It concerned a plantation which was hidden in the clinic grounds, along a wall. The two-metre plants will now be examined and then destroyed.”

Whoever it was who was hoping to grow their own smoke in this way will be sorely disappointed – the plants were nearly ready for harvest and already smelled strongly of cannabis, the paper reported.

“Perhaps someone wanted to take care of their own needs, or thought the spot would be particularly unsuspicious,” a worker at the St Alexius drug addiction clinic told the paper.

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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