According to Europol, teenagers are increasingly being recruited as hitmen or enforcers in Europe’s criminal underworld. Although this phenomenon has emerged as a new form of criminal activity among immigrant criminal gangs in Sweden, its spread to other countries is a more recent development.
“I’ll be honest, most of it started in Sweden,” Andy Kraag, a senior manager at Europol who heads the center for serious and organized crime, told SvD. Kraag is part of a Swedish-led taskforce focused on combating the trend, which, he says, is spreading “like wildfire.”
Young people, recruited online through apps like Instagram or TikTok, are promised money and status for committing crimes, from transporting drugs and weapons to contract murders. Gangs often target vulnerable children and teenagers, and communication and coordination are then handled via encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram and Signal.
Police Superintendent Theodor Smedius with the Swedish National Police Operations Department (Noa) warns that hiring minors to commit crimes is a method that could be used not only by criminal groups but also in other contexts, such as hybrid warfare by states or actors seeking to destabilize societies.
What was once limited to a handful of at-risk youth has now grown to involve thousands, Smedius said:
“We realized this was no longer a local issue—it had turned into an industry.”
