Gangs paying €260 to recruit teens as killers via gaming platforms, Garda warns

Organised crime gangs are offering young people €260 to travel abroad and film themselves committing murders, a senior Garda official told a conference in Wexford.

Criminal gangs recruiting young people to film murders for €260, Garda official warns

Organised crime gangs across northern Europe are using online gaming platforms to recruit young people to commit and film murders, a senior An Garda Síochána official has warned.

Andrew McLindon, head of communications for An Garda Síochána, told the Kennedy Summer School in New Ross, Co Wexford on Saturday that gangs are now offering targets $300 (€260) to travel to another European country to carry out a killing.

"They say: 'We want you to travel to another country, this is the person we want you to shoot, we want you to shoot them and we want you to video them,'" McLindon said. "That is happening in northern Europe at the moment and it's hugely concerning."

According to the Irish Times, McLindon said the gangs are effectively radicalising young people through online platforms, presenting membership of an organised crime group as a glamorous lifestyle.

"They are targeting young people through online platforms, they are effectively radicalising them and they turn them into a lifestyle of being a member of an OCG, that the organised crime gang is glamorous," he said.

Gardaí have worked with Europol to tackle what McLindon described as "nihilistic people and groups" — including the group known as 764 — who exploit social-media spaces that glamorise suicidal ideation to target vulnerable young people.

"These nihilistic people are competing with each other to see how much harm they can inflict or get self-inflicted on a young child," he said. "We are seeing the situation accelerating all the time and the harm to young people accelerating as well."

Also speaking at the Kennedy Summer School, Children's Ombudsman Niall Muldoon pointed to Meta's recent $16.7 billion legal settlement with US states, led by California, as evidence of the scale of profits the company has been seeking to protect.

"You could have a few extra castles in Ireland, yes," Muldoon said, referencing Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg's recent purchase of a property in Co Cork. "That's what you're up against."

Despite the scale of the payout, Muldoon said the settlement carried genuine significance. Algorithmic changes to reduce harmful content and restrict night-time use by minors — included as part of the agreement — would represent "a big step forward", he said.

Source: Irish Times