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Thief caught selling phone back to victim

A pickpocket was left feeling stupid at the weekend after he tried to sell a mobile phone back to the woman he had stolen it from - and was promptly arrested.

Published: 24 March 2014 14:59 CET

Thief caught selling phone back to victim

Photo: DPA

The 24-year-old pickpocket stole a €700 iPhone out of a woman's handbag at the main train station in Düsseldorf on Saturday night – but immediately forgot what she looked like.

The victim, 22, rang the police to report the incident, giving officers a detailed description of the thief, wrote the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung on Monday.

But just an hour later, she encountered her assailant again on a nearby street trying to make some quick cash. Not recognizing the woman, he tried to sell her phone back to her for just €60.

Together with her boyfriend, the woman seized the phone back from the pickpocket and took it straight to police in the train station.

There she gave officers another description of the thief and officers were able to apprehend him not long after, wandering around the station.

When police tried to arrest the man he grew aggressive and ended up spending the night in a police cell.

Police have charged the man with theft and handling stolen goods.

SEE ALSO: Germany nabs Vatican-bound cocaine condoms

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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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