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Feisty frau bombards burglar with spud missiles

A woman who saw a man breaking into a retirement home near her house in Neuss managed to scare him away by lobbing potatoes at him from her balcony, police in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia said on Wednesday.

Published: 15 April 2009 16:25 CEST

Feisty frau bombards burglar with spud missiles

Photo: DPA

Police said the 56-year-old woman was woken up around 4 am on Wednesday when she heard breaking glass.

When she went to her balcony to see what was happening, she spotted someone trying to break into the nearby retirement home.

“Because she didn’t have anything else available, she grabbed some potatoes and threw them at the burglar,” a police statement said.

He fled and the police say the woman prevented him from entering the computer room of the home – which he was probably intending to rob.

“Thanks to the unconventional but effective efforts of the alert witness, the crime could not be completed,” the statement said.

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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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