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Security van man turns himself in and reveals buried millions

A man who stole millions of euros from a security van he was in charge of and disappeared to Spain has turned himself in to police and led to the booty he had buried in a field near Neu-Ulm.

Published: 23 November 2008 10:55 CET

Security van man turns himself in and reveals buried millions

Photo:DPA

The 36-year-old man, named only as Metin Y., became the subject of an international arrest warrant after he made off with the money at the end of October.

The security van was found empty in a car park in Ulm, but Metin Y. was nowhere to be found.

Detectives followed up on some 160 clues, and the case was featured on television with appeals for information, to no avail. But on Friday police received a hot tip from Barcelona where Metin Y. had checked into a hotel under a false name.

The same day a lawyer called the Ulm police and said Metin Y. wanted to give himself up.

Officers got a phone call on Saturday with instructions on how to find the field where the money was buried.

There they not only found nearly all the money, but also Metin Y., waiting for his arrest.

Detectives are now trying to establish what happened to the small portion of the money which is missing, as well as to determine whether Metin Y. had help in fleeing Germany.

They say he has refused to tell them anything.

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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