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Gambling banker ‘took €8.4m from customers’

A German bank worker appeared in court this week accused of stealing more than €8 million from customers to feed his gambling addiction.

Published: 12 August 2013 16:16 CEST

Gambling banker 'took €8.4m from customers'

Photo: DPA

The 39-year-old who worked in Buxtehude near Hamburg took cash from customers’ accounts 156 times and pocketed money customers gave to him to invest, Stade District Court heard on Monday. In some instances he faked their signatures, prosecutors said.

The sums that disappeared between 2007 and 2010 ranged from several hundred to several hundred thousand euros.

The man allegedly blew much of the missing €8.4 million on online gambling and at a Hamburg casino.

He has been charged with fraud, breach of trust and falsification of documents. If found guilty he could be jailed for several years.

Prosecutors said the man, who has not been named, had already paid back €4.5 million.

His former colleagues will be called as witnesses in the trial to explain how he managed to take such large sums of money for years without being detected.

But his defence lawyers are set to argue that their client was a gambling addict, reducing his level of criminal responsibility.

The trial is set to continue on August 21st with a verdict expected in mid-September.

DPA/The Local/tsb

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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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