Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

CRIME

Supermarket worker finds loads of cocaine in banana crates

A supermarket worker in southern Germany was stunned to discover 28 kilogrammes (62 pounds) of cocaine while unpacking crates of bananas, police reported on Friday.

Published: 20 March 2009 17:07 CET

Supermarket worker finds loads of cocaine in banana crates

Photo: DPA

The 26-year-old woman in the Bavarian town of Illertissen alerted police immediately after making the find on Wednesday. Officers confiscated the two bins, packed full of the drug in yellow bags just below a thin layer of fruit.

The boxes had been part of a three-pallet fruit delivery that was distributed between several different supermarket chains in the states of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. The shipment originated in Colombia and went through Antwerp, Belgium.

“Some dealers must have picked up the wrong boxes,” Bavarian police spokesperson Ludwig Waldinger told news agency AFP, adding that he’d love to get a look at their faces when the drug dealers tried to get their fix from the fruit snack.

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.

Url copied to clipboard!