German police have arrested 11 Nigerian men suspected of being in a mafia group who orchestrated large-scale dating scams.
The Black Axe gang was involved in “multiple areas of criminal activity” globally, Bavarian police said in a statement.
In Germany, the mafia organisation focuses on romance scams and money laundering, the force added.
The statement 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.”
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Globally, the gang’s main areas of operation were “human-trafficking, fraud, money-laundering, prostitution and drug-trafficking”.
The arrested suspects all hold Nigerian citizenship and are aged between 29 and 53.
They were detained on Tuesday in raids across the region of Bavaria following a police probe that lasted more than two years.
A 2021 BBC investigation of Black Axe unearthed evidence that the group had infiltrated politics in Nigeria and ran a killing operation spanning the globe.
SOURCE: BBCNEWS
