Investigators from the Netherlands and Germany have landed a major blow to ATM demolition.

The Osnabrück police department, which has been coordinating the complex operation since the beginning of the year, said 13 suspected perpetrators had been arrested over a longer period of time.

The most recent arrest took place on Tuesday in Helmond, the Netherlands.

Pure burger

Political correspondent in North Rhine-Westphalia.

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On Wednesday, around a hundred officers from North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and the Netherlands searched 16 residential and commercial buildings, and stolen license plates, the perpetrator's clothing and jammers were secured.

In the Netherlands, the authorities confiscated a car and a motorcycle.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, there was a raid in Recklinghausen, among other places, and 35 mobile phones were found there alone.

In NRW alone there were 150 explosive attacks on ATMs last year.

According to investigators, behind a large number of crimes in Germany are gangs from the Netherlands who are working on a division of labor, such as the one that has now been busted.

According to current knowledge, its 17 members are strongly suspected of having blown up at least twelve ATMs in several federal states in different compositions, causing damage of more than four million euros.

Months of covert investigations in which the Federal Criminal Police Office and Europol were also involved preceded the current major operation.

The fact that the police and public prosecutor's offices focused on rental car companies, such as a company in Mülheim an der Ruhr, proved to be particularly helpful in identifying the perpetrators.

There, members of the Sprenger Gang are said to have rented cars that were used as crime vehicles.

The German-Dutch investigators, acting in concert, struck a first big blow in the autumn when not only were 24 members of the Dutch explosives scene arrested, but they also succeeded in partially examining their organizational and logistical structure.

Among other things, a kind of test and training center for ATM demolitions with devices procured from Germany was discovered in Utrecht.