OAP gang 'tortured financial adviser'

A group of pensioners has been accused of kidnapping and torturing a financial adviser who lost over €2m of their savings.

The pensioners, nicknamed the "Geritol Gang" by police after an arthritis drug, face up to 15 years in jail if found guilty of subjecting German-American James Amburn to the alleged four-day ordeal.

Two of them are said to have hit him with a Zimmer frame outside his home in Speyer, western Germany, before he was driven 300 miles to a home on the shores of a lake in Bavaria.

Mr Amburn (56) says he was burned with cigarettes, beaten, had ribs broken, was hit with a chair leg and chained up "like an animal".

The incident began on Tuesday last week after Mr Amburn, the head of an investment firm called Digitalglobalnet, was allegedly attacked by two men aged 74 and 60.

Another couple, retired doctors aged 63 and 66, later arrived to join in the alleged torture.

"I was struck. Again and again they threatened to kill me. The fear of death was indescribable," he said.

He told them he could pay them back if he sold some securities in Switzerland and they agreed to let him send a fax to a bank there.

He scribbled a plea for help on the fax. Armed commandos stormed the house on Saturday.

* This article is from The Belfast Telegraph.