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Breno, still in jail, gets Sao Paolo offer

Breno, the Brazilian Bayern München defender who now lives in a Bavarian jail cell after being sentenced to three years and nine months for setting fire to his rented villa, has received an offer to play for his old team in Brazil.

Published: 22 December 2012 10:58 CET

Breno, still in jail, gets Sao Paolo offer

Photo: DPA

The Münchener Merkur reported that Sao Paolo has made Breno an offer, but Steffen Ufer, Breno’s German attorney, said his client hasn’t signed anything and that to do so would be counter productive.

He said his client will first accept offers “when everything in Germany is taken care of.” Ufer is appealing Breno’s sentence and has contested the football star’s imprisionment terms.

“The judges in Munich handed down a very severe sentence,” Ufer said, adding that he hoped more mercy would be shown on appeal.

He’s also trying to get the court to agree to allow Breno out of jail during the day so he can train. The manager at 1. FC Nürnberg said if Breno were let out during the day he could train with his team.

Attorney Ufer repeated that his client has no intention of fleeing Germany and recognizes the need to fulfill the German requirements of his release. Breno’s wife Renata backed that.

“He’ll go there once everything in Germany is dealt with,” she said.

The Local/mw

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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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