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CRIME

Tire factory gets bomb threats for two days in a row

For the second time in two days, the Goodyear Dunlop tire factory in Fulda received bomb threats from an unknown man, police reported Tuesday.

Tire factory gets bomb threats for two days in a row
Photo: DPA

The man called the police emergency hotline at 10 AM Tuesday morning and said the plant would be attacked later Tuesday afternoon, the daily Fuldaer Zeitung reported. On Monday, a man had also called in an anonymous threat against the factory.

Police could not definitively say whether Tuesday’s caller was the same as Monday’s.

The plant’s grounds were closed though it was uncertain whether the buildings had been evacuated. About 500 employees were forced to leave the facility Monday while police used trained dogs and a helicopter to search the facility for explosives. No sign of a bomb was discovered.

The factory’s late shift couldn’t come into work Monday afternoon as the searches were still ongoing and production only resumed with the night shift. The Fuldaer Zeitung reported that the factory remained open Tuesday, despite the renewed bomb threats.

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CRIME

German police swoop on gang of foreign dating scammers

German police said Wednesday they had arrested 11 suspected members of a Nigerian mafia group behind a large-scale dating scam.

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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