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British man shot dead in popular Berlin district

A 31-year-old British man was shot dead in Berlin early on Sunday morning, according to reports in the local media.

Published: 21 September 2015 09:13 CEST

British man shot dead in popular Berlin district

The man was shot in the popular Neukölln neighbourhood. Photo: DPA

The man was found by a passerby at around six o'clock in the morning on Sunday in the neighbourhood of Neukölln, one of the best-loved boroughs among young expats, reports the Berliner Kurier.

Emergency services arrived at the scene shorty afterwards and immediately took the man to hospital, but he died of his injuries on before the ambulance reached the emergency ward.

Later on Sunday police searched a nearby house where they believed the murderer to live.

“The house was searched at eight o'clock but the suspect was not found,“ a police spokesperson said.

According to the Kurier the suspect is a 62-year-old Berliner who was wearing a black leather jacket and a cowboy hat at the time of the incident and was armed with a shotgun.

The tabloid also claims that police found and seized weapons in the suspect's home.

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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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