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Inmate escapes German prison in cardboard box

Authorities in Willich have asked for clues in the escape of a 37-year-old inmate who managed to hide himself in a cardboard box picked up by a delivery truck last week.

Published: 18 November 2008 11:19 CET

Inmate escapes German prison in cardboard box

Photo: Kreispolizeibehörde Viersen

Yasar Bayrack, who also goes by the alias of Ibrahim Yasin, is a Turkish national who was serving time for narcotics violations at the JVA Willich I prison near Düsseldorf when he made his wily escape, investigators in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia reported. He remains at large and police have no leads regarding his whereabouts.

“He succeeded in hiding himself in a box that was picked up with other boxes from the prison,” a police statement said. Bayrack then apparently opened the box and fled the delivery truck unnoticed. His escape was only discovered when the truck driver noticed the truck wasn’t properly closed and called the prison.

The prisoner is about 185 centimetres tall, bald, and has a goatee. He was dressed in blue work pants and a white t-shirt.

Witnesses are asked to report clues to Viersen police at 02162/377-0.

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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