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Suspected thief made police recruitment poster boy

A €50,000-recruitment campaign recently launched by the Hamburg police took an ironic turn after one of the models hired to pose as an officer turned out to be a suspected thief.

Published: 19 December 2011 11:30 CET

Suspected thief made police recruitment poster boy

Photo:DPA

The man was one of four professional models to be used in a series of posters aimed at attracting new talent to the police force. The pictures were on display in train stations and underground stations across the northern German city and showed the suspected thief in full police uniform.

However, a passer-by soon recognised the man he believes stole money from him in August 2011, the Hamburger Abendblatt reported on Sunday.

The accused, whose name has not been released, denies all charges against him.

Hamburg police spokesman Mirko Streiber told the paper that the posters are now “being scrapped and the search for a new model is underway.”

Streiber added that “the sum of money that was allegedly stolen is believed to be relatively low.”

The Hamburg police stressed they had no indication the man was potentially a petty criminal before he was hired for the recruitment campaign.

DPA/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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