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Thieves dynamite ATM, blow up bank

German thieves made an explosive miscalculation on Sunday night when trying to blow open cash machine – they used so much dynamite they destroyed the bank – but managed to escape with the ATM.

Published: 24 September 2012 11:45 CEST
Updated: 24 September 2012 14:03 CEST

Thieves dynamite ATM, blow up bank

Photo: DPA

Parts of the Sparkasse bank were flung more than 80 metres across the street, damaging two neighbouring buildings, the Westfälische Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Monday.

Despite their misjudgement, the suspects appeared to have left the scene with the cash machine as police confirmed to The Local, it was missing.

The suspects probably used far too much dynamite, police in Nottuln, near Münster North-Rhine Westphalia said on Monday.

No information has been released on how much money was in the machine, but the blast has caused hundreds of thousands of euros in damage.

The flats above the bank are uninhabitable a police spokesman said, and engineers will be brought in to determine whether the entire building will have to be demolished.

DAPD/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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