Overview

• Police closed the tip portal after collecting more than 140 submissions detailing alleged fake traffic stops used to extort cash.
• A specialized Landeskriminalamt team has begun evaluating the reports at the Staatsanwaltschaft’s request to uncover additional victims as well as corroborate accounts.
• Authorities allege three Berlin officers and a 45-year-old forger staged the stops on April 21 and May 8, extracting upwards of €8,000 from motorists.
• Early June raids executed by prosecutors secured arrest warrants and seized mobile phones and records from the suspects’ homes and rental vehicles.
• All four face charges of gang-organized theft coupled with document forgery in two separate cases.