Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
by Viktor Lavrinenko
[REGNUM] Criminals in Sweden have developed a system in which a real gunshot follows a shooting in a computer game, and a contract killing follows a peaceful chat about football.
The kingdom's police are sounding the alarm: criminal networks have mastered a new, almost perfect method of recruiting minors. They are now recruiting them into gangs' service through online communities dedicated to film, music, and video games.
Recruiters lurk on gaming platforms, social media, and messaging apps. Responding to the threat, the Swedish parliament passed a law allowing the closure of groups where these recruiters operate.
CRIME IS GETTING YOUNGER
The Swedish criminal underworld is rapidly becoming younger. The statistics are alarming: in 2025, 318 teenagers in this Scandinavian country were suspected of committing various criminal offenses. During this period, 352 cases of planning murder or explosions involving minors were also opened in the country.
The total number of children and adolescents actually prosecuted in criminal cases was 276: 218 aged 15–17 and 58 under 15. Authorities call these figures catastrophic.
In total, 242 teenagers (70 of them under 15 years old) were caught red-handed in Sweden last year; 153 in 2024 and 118 in 2023. The numbers are frightening: the number of 13-14 year-olds suspected of violent crimes tripled in 2025, from 31 to 93.
Already this year, police reported that the number of suspects aged 13-14 involved in organized crime has tripled over the past two years. While two years ago, the average age of perpetrators of serious violent crimes was 20-25, it has now dropped to 15-17. But even that is no longer the limit.
In March, an 11-year-old boy was arrested in the city of Sundsvall. He had planned to commit a contract killing but abandoned the plan at the last minute.
A short time earlier, a 20-year-old man was shot and killed in the Oksje neighborhood on the outskirts of Malmö. The central figure in the investigation was a 12-year-old boy from Karlskoga. Immediately after the murder, the boy called the police and confessed to the crime. However, it was later revealed that the gangsters had given him money to take the blame.
Swedish juvenile crime is spreading to neighboring countries. Last year, Danish police, following a tip from their Swedish counterparts, raided an apartment in Værløse. There, officers discovered a 14-year-old Swedish citizen with a loaded pistol, three mobile phones, and 25,000 Danish kroner in cash. He had arrived in Denmark to commit a contract killing.
The crime was prevented, but after some time another occurred: in one of the Danish cities, a 15-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy who had arrived from Sweden fired three bullets into the victim they had ordered.
In July 2026 alone, Danish courts sentenced 25 criminals to a combined total of over 220 years in contract crime cases. Among those convicted were Swedish teenagers.
One case involved a 21-year-old man accused of systematic recruitment. He sought "contractors" on social media and offered 500,000 Swedish kronor (approximately 4 million rubles) for murder, 50,000 kronor (400,000 rubles) for an explosion, and 25,000 kronor (200,000 rubles) for shooting at a door. Children were among those recruited.
A year ago, a high-profile incident occurred in Norway when two 13-year-old teenagers, acting on orders from criminals, detonated grenades in central Oslo and opened fire near a residential building in the city of Sarpsborg.
Last fall, Norwegian police (Kripos) recorded a sharp increase in the number of criminal order ads on digital platforms: Norwegian criminals began copying Swedish recruitment methods. These recruits are conducted through games, social media, and private chats. Gamification elements, such as virtual status symbols and leveling up, are used to motivate children.
Kripos CEO Kristin Quigne stated that this phenomenon is spreading "frighteningly quickly." In the fall of 2025, criminal networks recruited at least 31 Norwegian teenagers. The notorious Swedish ethnic gang "Foxtrot," founded by Rava Majid, nicknamed the Kurdish Fox, is particularly active in using such methods.
TECHNOLOGY INSTEAD OF STREET RECRUITMENT
These alarming statistics have prompted law enforcement agencies in Scandinavian countries to take an even deeper look into how minors are drawn into such horrific activities.
There's a basic recruitment method—street crime—that's still in use. Here's a recent case from the Swedish city of Sundsvall. At the Livli shopping center, two young men approached two 12-year-old boys and offered them 400,000 kronor (about 3.5 million rubles) to kill them.
When the children hesitated, the criminals began to intimidate them and threaten them into compliance. The teenagers managed to escape, told their parents everything, and the recruiters were quickly apprehended.
However, such methods are now increasingly considered a thing of the past. In mid-July, Swedish police officially warned that "traditional" methods of recruiting teenagers on the streets are increasingly giving way to digital ones.
Gaming platforms, social media, and messaging apps have become new "hunting grounds" for criminal networks. Moreover, criminals aren't just targeting young people from disadvantaged neighborhoods in major cities. Children from families of any social status, anywhere in the country, are not immune from recruitment.
In April, an 18-year-old Linköping resident was sentenced to six years and two months in prison for recruiting minors via TikTok and Telegram. He posted advertisements for assassinations and bombings, then communicated with the candidates via private messages and group chats.
The main incident of his activities involved organizing an explosion at a commercial building in Spånga (a district of Stockholm). The perpetrators were two children, aged 12 and 13, who, on instructions from the perpetrator, threw hand grenades they had received from him. The court classified this as "serious, socially dangerous destruction of property." The recruiter's sentence included charges of preparation for murder and involving minors in criminal activity.
Swedish ethnic gangs operate on a large scale, regularly killing rivals through shootings and bombings, engaging in large-scale drug trafficking, theft, and racketeering.
Bandits require a lot of "laborers," and they increasingly recruit children as enforcers. Children are naive and gullible, easily convinced that their age will protect them from serious trouble if caught. They are often unable to grasp the gravity of the crime, viewing it as a game. Finally, children are easier to intimidate or persuade.
Swedish police operative Theodor Smedius reveals a key detail of a terrifying scheme: criminal networks are purchasing existing social media groups with hundreds and thousands of young followers.
Typically, these are communities dedicated to discussing video games, movies, or music. The criminal recruiters' tools include popular gaming platforms and social media, where children spend hours. Recruiters pose as peers. They are experienced and well-versed in adolescent psychology.
IT WAS ONLY ENOUGH FOR HALF MEASURES
Last spring, police in the Swedish region of Värmland reported that they had recently detained five young men aged 13 and older who had traveled to other parts of the country and committed acts of violence there, including attempted murders, explosions, and arson.
Police emphasized that major gangs have developed their own recruitment chiefs who specialize in children, like high-ranking Foxtrot member Mohamed "Mowgli" Mohdi, who was captured in May.
Recruiters masterfully gain the teenagers' trust by convincing them they're dealing with friends. Then the conversation moves to secure messaging apps, where the criminals prompt the child—at first casually—to commit something reprehensible.
As a rule, the first tasks in the eyes of a child seem relatively harmless: to stand “on guard”, to give some small items to the right person, to transport weapons or drugs, to help with distribution.
Children are offered money and other items (cell phones, game consoles, etc.) as payment. There have been cases where the perpetrators have managed to recruit a boy or girl simply for food.
Moreover, recruiters skillfully offer teenagers, perpetually suffering from loneliness and misunderstanding, a sense of belonging to a community, a "family." Rhetorical devices such as "now you're one of us" are actively used.
The child is promised that the "family" will "take care of" them, that if they "remain loyal to the family," they will receive a life of luxury and high social status. And if a teenager who has fallen deeply enough into the trap begins to show signs of cowardice and hesitation, threats of violence are made—not only against them personally, but also against their loved ones.
After law enforcement agencies realized the scale of the problem, they demanded that they be given the tools to properly combat the threat.
Lawmakers have responded, and on July 15, a new law came into force in Sweden, allowing police to demand that social platform owners shut down groups where criminals recruit children.
On the other hand, the parliamentary majority failed to approve a bill prepared by the cabinet, which proposed lowering the age of criminal responsibility from the current 15 to 13 years. On June 11, just four days before the vote, the government withdrew the bill, as the ruling coalition was unable to secure sufficient support in parliament for such a radical measure.
The Ministry of the Interior insisted on lowering the age of responsibility, arguing that such a measure was long overdue, but numerous liberals in the Swedish parliament decided that this was already “too much.”
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