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Police arrest one in poker heist investigation

Police in Berlin hunting for a gang who robbed a high-stakes poker tournament in front of rolling cameras have made an arrest and raided several addresses in the capital.

Published: 13 March 2010 11:06 CET

Police arrest one in poker heist investigation

Photo: DPA

A team of armed officers arrested a suspect thought to have taken part in the robbery, police confirmed on Saturday morning, following a report in the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper.

Detectives investigating the heist on the tournament at the Berlin Grand Hyatt Hotel on Potsdamer Platz arrested the man on Friday evening after following clues about the getaway car.

Four machete-wielding men stormed the European Poker Tour while guards were on their break, and just as hundreds of thousands of euros were being prepared for transfer to the main safe.

They escaped with around €242,000 in cash, having caused chaos amid the crowded hotel, where players including celebrities such as Boris Becker had been taking part in the poker match.

Sources told the paper the man they arrested was thought to have taken part in another high-profile robbery in 2004. That January four armed masked men stormed the casino at the top of the Park Inn on Alexanderplatz in central Berlin. They were later arrested and convicted, receiving jail terms of between two and four years.

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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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