Rome - "So, when are we going to kill the first one?" It's not a line from a crime TV series, but a real message, typed into an encrypted chat by a boy eager to complete his "baptism of fire."
Some asked for a certain timeframe for the murder, and others, without any inhibitions, wrote: "I can't wait to see my first corpse."
This is the chilling face of the new European organized crime, revealed in Europol's latest report. A system that has transformed death into a commodity, a service that can be purchased like a ride or a home delivery.
Operation Grimm and the numbers of the blitz
In six months of intensive investigations, the Grimm task force has opened the Pandora's box of the phenomenon known as Violence as a Service (VaaS). The toll is shocking: 193 people arrested across Europe.
The investigation, launched in April 2025, has highlighted a rapidly growing trend: mafia bosses are no longer getting their hands dirty, but are "outsourcing" violence. They outsource intimidation, torture, and murder, relying on a disposable workforce, mostly composed of minors or inexperienced young people, recruited through social media platforms.
From Sweden to the rest of Europe
What initially seemed like an anomaly confined to Swedish gangs turned out to be a cancer metastasizing across the continent. The task force had to coordinate investigators from Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom, and, of course, Sweden.
The modus operandi is identical everywhere: social media ads, promises of quick and easy money, and the assignment of a "target." Young people, often in vulnerable situations or fascinated by the myth of the underworld, are trained remotely or coerced into becoming perpetrators.
The Chain of Death: From "Facilitators" to Bosses
Europol's report details the dismantled criminal hierarchy. Of the nearly two hundred arrests:
63 are the material perpetrators, arrested before they could commit violent crimes or immediately after having committed them;
84 are the recruiters, the key figures who lured minors on the web;
40 were the facilitators, those who provided the logistics (weapons, vehicles, accommodation) for the paid services;
There are 6 instigators, the high-level instigators (High Value Targets) who ordered the executions.
"The Grimm Task Force played a key role in neutralizing groups recruiting young people to commit violent acts," the report states. This investigative success has put a stop, at least for now, to the macabre assembly line of contract killings that threatened to normalize barbarity among the younger generations.
Verified Source
Choose the social channel you want to subscribe to