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Two patients die after group therapy at Berlin doctor’s office

A deadly drug cocktail may have caused the deaths of two men and the poisoning of 10 others at a Berlin doctor’s office Saturday, police reported.

Published: 20 September 2009 11:39 CEST

Two patients die after group therapy at Berlin doctor’s office

Photo: DPA

The poisoning occurred during a group therapy session at a doctor’s office in the Berlin neighbourhood of Hermsdorf Saturday afternoon.

A 59-year-old man died on the scene and a 28-year-old man died later Saturday evening in hospital after falling into a coma. A third man remained in a coma. The other patients were released Saturday evening.

Police arrested a 50-year-old doctor on the scene.

Media reports say the drug cocktail may have included a mixture of heroin, amphetamines and Ecstasy. There was no word as to whether the deadly combination was injected or offered in tablet form.

A sign in front of the doctor’s office offered special psychiatric treatments including psychoactive substances. These reportedly included LSD and psychedelic mushrooms, which are illegal in Germany.

According to the daily Berliner Zeitung, the crime scene was roped off Sunday.

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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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