Gangs offering €260 online to film murders, conference told

Organised crime gangs across northern Europe are targeting young people through online gaming platforms to film themselves committing murders, a senior Garda figure has said.Andrew McLindon, head of communications for An Garda Síochána, said the gangs were now offering young targets $300 (€260) to go to another European country to kill someone.“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.’ That is happening in northern Europe at the moment and it’s hugely concerning,” he told the Kennedy Summer School in New Ross, Co Wexford, on Saturday. “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.” READ MOREGardaí have worked with Europol colleagues to tackle “nihilistic people and groups” such as 764.“These are people who don’t care about anybody else, don’t care about the individual,” he said. “What they are doing, unfortunately, is they’re targeting again through online gaming platforms, again through social-media sites or social-media sections that glamorise suicidal ideation, they target vulnerable people, young people.“These nihilistic people are competing with each other to see how much harm they can inflict or get self-inflict[ed] on a young child. So we are seeing the situation accelerating all the time and the harm to young people accelerating as well.” Meanwhile, Children’s Ombudsman Niall Muldoon said the scale of the recent $16.7 billion settlement paid out by Meta shows the scale of profits the company was trying to protect.“You could have a few extra castles in Ireland, yes. I think again it’s important to recognise. That’s what you’re up against,” he said, referring to Mark Zuckerberg’s recent purchase of a property in Co Cork. However, the legal settlement with US states led by California was significant because the promised algorithmic changes to cut harmful conduct and night-time use by minors, included in the agreement, would be “a big step forward”, he said.