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Police carry sleeping drunk driver to alcohol test

A driver was so drunk on Monday night that police officers had to carry him to their station for a blood test, authorities in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate said.

Published: 12 October 2010 09:19 CEST

Police carry sleeping drunk driver to alcohol test

Photo: DPA

The 57-year-old apparently fell asleep while driving. A resident in the small town of Mayen called to report seeing a man sleeping in his car around 10 pm, and police found him still wearing his seatbelt, slumped over the steering wheel.

According to the report, the car motor was still warm and the keys were in the ignition.

“Inside the car there was an intense smell of alcohol,” the statement said.

Officers were unable to stir the slumbering driver, who slept through transport to the station, the blood test and the confiscation of his driver’s licence.

“Hard work for the police officers who had to carry the man,” the statement added.

The man spent the night in a local hospital for observation after officers failed to reach a family member to pick him up.

The Local/ka

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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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