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Two Australians face jail for running up €148,000 hotel tab

Two Australian men stood in a Frankfurt court on Monday for running up an enormous hotel bill that they couldn’t pay.

Published: 22 September 2008 18:33 CEST

The 51-year-old and his 37-year-old friend had a tab at the five-star luxury hotel Villa Kennedy totaling €148,000. Staying the presidential suite cost them €3,800 a night, but after they told the hotel management they had a “temporary shortage” of cash, they were moved to a cheaper room. That didn’t stop them, however, from continuing to live it up over the course of two months and using the hotel’s limousine, hairstylist, and room services.

Both men partially admitted to their fine Frankfurt fun at the start of the trial on Monday, but said business partners in Dubai were meant to cover the tab. They also acknowledged that they had formally purchased a fancy apartment in Frankfurt for €1.5 million even though they couldn’t cover the notary’s translation costs of €416.

The two Australians have been held in custody since their arrest in April.

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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