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CRIME

Woman burned father in Easter bonfire

A German woman in Osnabrück has been fined €800 and handed a 15-month suspended sentence for burning her father’s corpse in an Easter bonfire - and collecting his pension after his death.

Woman burned father in Easter bonfire
Photo: DPA

According to the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, the 41-year-old woman tossed her father’s body on an Easter Sunday bonfire on her own property in 2010, after reportedly leaving his corpse for months in his own apartment, and then later keeping it in a barn.

In the meantime, she collected his retirement benefits of €1,500 a month, which she testified that she was financially dependent on. The affair came to light after her sister, sensing something was awry, contacted police.

The court sentenced the woman on charges of bodily harm, fraud, and falsification of documents.

The court considered it evident that the woman had given her alcoholic father wine and had never stopped him from drinking schnapps, and that she accepted the consequences the alcohol would have for her father, who suffered from heart problems.

But the woman and her mentally-ill husband were both acquitted on charges of abuse. Her 42-year-old husband reportedly used a tractor to help move his father-in-law’s body from the barn to the bonfire. He received a €500 fine.

The woman’s father moved in with her and her family about 18 months before his death. After he died in July 2009, the daughter reportedly didn’t tell anyone of his death, until weeks later when she told her husband.

She reportedly forged her father’s signature to receive his retirement benefits. The woman, who has two young children, said she did not receive financial support from her husband.

The Local/DPA/DAPD/mbw

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CRIME

German police swoop on gang of foreign dating scammers

German police said Wednesday they had arrested 11 suspected members of a Nigerian mafia group behind a large-scale dating scam.

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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