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Europol Task Force Reports 300 Arrests but at Least 10 Contract Killings by Minors Since April 2025
The Grimm Task Force, launched in April 2025, has identified more than 15,000 online accounts and 1,500 people tied to contract crimes carried out by minors across Western Europe.
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A Europol task force formed to counter the recruitment of minors for contract killings has made nearly 300 arrests across 11 countries since April 2025. The Grimm Task Force has identified more than 15,000 online accounts and more than 1,500 people linked to violence-as-a-service crimes, according to Europol.
At least 10 contract killings in Western Europe have been carried out by minors since the task force began, and more than 100 additional crimes involving minors include bombings, kidnappings, torture, shootings, stabbings, and setting other children on fire.
Europol investigators say contract payments offered in Sweden range from 3,000€ to 40,000€, with similar price ranges observed in France. The networks operate through encrypted messaging apps and gaming platforms, where recruiters seek teens as young as 13 to carry out crimes for narcotics gangs.
In one case documented in Swedish court records, a 16-year-old boy was recruited via encrypted chat groups to settle a debt.
In March 2025 he shot and killed 16-year-old Rio outside a gym in Stockholm and wounded another teenager in the thigh. Rio was not the intended target. Police arrested the shooter less than an hour later a few hundred feet from the scene while he waited for a pre-ordered getaway taxi, court documents state.
The gun remained in his jacket. He told investigators he did not remember pulling the trigger and was convicted of murder and sentenced to 9½ years in prison. “This is spreading like wildfire,” said Andy Kraag, lead investigator of the Grimm Task Force and head of Europol’s Serious and Organised Crime Centre.
The FBI is investigating more than 450 subjects tied to violent online networks, including criminal gangs, and every FBI field office in the United States is working on related cases, the bureau told ABC News. Anneli Berg, Rio’s mother, said she hopes sharing her son’s story will prompt more parents to discuss online dangers with their children.
