Swedish Teen Hired by Foxtrot Gang to Kill in the Netherlands

ÖREBRO - A 16-year-old Swede who needed money fast was recruited online by the Foxtrot crime network, sent to the Netherlands with travel, lodging and a gun arranged for him, and told to kill a prisoner outside a Dutch jail. Back home, he allegedly tried to hire someone else for a murder in Sweden. He has now been charged.

The case is being heard by Örebro District Court. Prosecutors have charged the teenager with attempted murder, a serious weapons offence and attempting to commission another killing.

Caught at a Train Station

On 18 January, police stopped the boy at Örebro central station after he stepped off a train. He was wanted for running away from his foster home in the Dalarna region and was already suspected of two minor fraud offences, so officers seized his phone. Social services then moved him to a new foster home.

When investigators went through the phone, they found chats pointing to a violent crime in the Netherlands. Dutch police confirmed that a man had been shot at outside a prison in Alphen aan den Rijn on the morning of 16 January - two days before the teenager turned up in Örebro. The phone data matched. He was arrested on 23 January, held in custody from 26 January and released on 21 April pending trial.

"How Do I Make 30,000 Fast"

According to the investigation, on 30 December 2025 the boy searched online for "How do I make 30,000 fast?" and "How to make 30,000 in 8 days". On New Year's Day he searched for "criminal jobs" and "jappish" - Swedish gang slang for a contract killing.

A witness told police he owed someone exactly 30,000 kronor, roughly 2,800 dollars, and had been threatened that the creditor would come to his home and shoot him if he did not pay.

He then made contact with an account on the encrypted app Signal calling itself "Cobra". Its profile picture showed a fox holding a rifle under the words "Team Fox", in the colours of the Iranian flag - a symbol tied to Foxtrot, the Swedish gang network the United States sanctioned in 2025 for carrying out attacks on behalf of Iran.

A Prisoner on Day Release

Over the following days, the hit was planned. The target was a man with previous convictions for serious violence who was serving a sentence in a Dutch prison and was allowed out on day release.

The teenager took the night train from Linköping to Hamburg, arriving in Germany on 6 January, and travelled on to Utrecht the same day. On 14 January, Cobra sent him the prison's address, a photo of the man he was to kill and a picture of the company car the target usually drove.

On the morning of 16 January he went to the prison. His first shots missed, but he kept firing at the man as he ran. The victim was eventually hit and taken to hospital. He survived.

Cobra was not impressed. "Not 1 single bullet hit," the handler wrote in the chat.

"No Comment"

According to the prosecutor, the boy admits being at the scene and firing shots but denies attempted murder. In his first two interviews he answered "no comment" to almost every question. In the third, he claimed he had missed "on purpose" to scare the man. In the fourth, he admitted he took the job for the money and pleaded guilty to a serious weapons offence, but argues the shooting was an aggravated unlawful threat rather than attempted murder. He has refused to say who booked his trip.

Recruiting His Own Hitman on TikTok

Prosecutors also accuse him of trying to farm out a second killing. In a TikTok chat group called "Jobbfinns" - "Jobs Available" - he allegedly asked whether someone "needs a job", describing it as a hit in Sweden for 300,000 kronor. He promised the contact 50,000 kronor for finding a shooter, calling it a "quick simple thing".

The case is the latest example of how Sweden's gang networks use children, recruited through social media and paid in cash, as disposable gunmen - both at home and, increasingly, across Europe.