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CRIME

Switzerland implicates 600 Germans in paedophile network

Six hundred Germans are suspected of involvement in an Internet paedophile network uncovered in Switzerland, where four men have already been arrested in the investigation.

Published: 4 September 2008 00:32 CEST

Forty Austrian men are also involved, judicial authorities in the northeastern Swiss canton of St. Gallen said on Wednesday. Four Swiss men have been arrested for “acts of a sexual nature” against children, and for producing pornographic films and images involving young girls.

Legal proceedings have also been launched against another nine Swiss men aged between 20 and 65. Two of the men are accused of sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl and posting images of the abuse on the internet forum.

The homes of the 13 men have been searched by police, and computer hard-drives and other equipment have been confiscated. Austrian police said Wednesday they had opened a case against 15 men between 30 and 60 years old following the break-up of the paedophile network.

Police spokesman Helmut Greiner said Swiss authorities had sent the IP addresses of 35 Austrians to their colleagues in Vienna in connection with the probe in Switzerland.

Cyber-crime investigators uncovered the network which was hosted by a St. Gallen-based Internet service provider. Investigating magistrate Ursula Brasey told Swiss news agency ATS that the head of the ISP had alerted the authorities to the content of the site, and would not face any charges.

The German-language forum featured accounts from different men about their experiences with young girls and how best to ‘groom’ them for pornographic ends, the authorities said.

CRIME

German police swoop on gang of foreign dating scammers

German police said Wednesday they had arrested 11 suspected members of a Nigerian mafia group behind a large-scale dating scam.

Published: 25 April 2024 09:35 CEST
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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