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Thieves dig 30-metre tunnel to rob bank

Berlin fire fighters called on Monday to an underground garage put out a blaze only to find a 30-metre-long tunnel leading to the vaults of a nearby bank - which had been emptied.

Published: 14 January 2013 15:12 CET

Thieves dig 30-metre tunnel to rob bank

Photo: DPA

The fire, which police believe was begun by the thieves in an attempt to erase any evidence and cause a distraction while they robbed the bank, broke out at around 6:15 am theTagesspiegel regional paper reported.

The thieves had smashed through reinforced concrete to dig their tunnel, meaning they must have had access to heavy duty equipment.

Police were still examining the scene in the Steglitz area of the capital on Monday afternoon and are yet to have found any clues pointing to suspects, despite thorough questioning of people living in the area.

Exactly how much money was stolen from the Volksbank branch has not been revealed and police said they had no idea where the ground excavated from the tunnel had ended up.

A similar incident took place in the southern part of Berlin in 1995, when an 11-strong gang tunnelled into a bank in Zehlendorf and took 16 hostages as well as several million euros.

The Local/jcw

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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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