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Germany’s most wanted criminal collared

Germany’s most wanted violent criminal Thomas Feldhofer was finally captured on Sunday near the northern coastal town of Lübeck. He had been on the run for several months after a series of armed robberies.

Published: 20 February 2012 08:34 CET

Germany’s most wanted criminal collared

Photo: DPA

According to state prosecution spokesman Alexander Bartle, Feldhofer stole a car in Hamburg on Saturday. “That sparked a new investigation,” said Bartle. Information offered by the general public is said to have led to the arrest.

Feldhofer reportedly hijacked a car on Saturday evening in Hamburg, when he held a gun to the head of a 41-year-old man who had stopped at a red light. Police were finally able to arrest him following a car chase on Sunday.

Police throughout Europe have been searching for Feldhofer since he spectacularly escaped them in the state of Hesse several months ago. In December 2011 he is said to have hijacked a bus and robbed all its passengers.

He is also thought to have several robbed banks, petrol stations and shops throughout the country.

According to media reports, investigators were consistently taken aback by the speed with which he could travel around the country. He is said to have stolen or hijacked several cars as getaway vehicles.

Feldhofer already served seven years in prison between 2001 and 2008 for eight bank robberies.

DPA/The Local/bk

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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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