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Wedding party turns into mass fight with restaurant staff

A wedding party in Bavaria turned into such a nasty fight that police are investigating for a possible attempted murder charge.

Published: 24 May 2010 13:40 CEST

Wedding party turns into mass fight with restaurant staff

Thought of everything for the big day? Don't forget bandages. Photo: DPA

The party on Sunday in the upper Bavaria town of Taufkirchen, ended with a mass fight in which six people were seriously hurt, two so badly that they ended up in hospital.

The fight was only broken up when the initial police officers who showed up at the restaurant called for back up to help pull scrapping guests and staff off each other.

The reason why the wedding party turned into a mass fight is not yet clear, but it appears that some of the 300 guests had an argument with some of the restaurant staff, which got completely out of hand.

A group of around 30 guests apparently became physically involved in the fight. Five suspects were arrested.

The bride and groom could not be found on Monday.

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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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