Axe falls on suspected Internet scam syndicate

Members of Black Axe, an organisation that has practised a range of Internet scams, are reportedly on the run as international authorities close in on them. At dawn last Tuesday, 160 officers from the Hawks, the Special Task Force, the Tactical Operations Management Section, Crime Intelligence, K9, the Cape Town metro police and the US Secret Service (USSS) and FBI, descended on nine properties in Table Bay, Cape Town, after a three-year investigation. The Sunday Times reports that they severed the head of one of the world’s biggest organised crime syndicates. When the news of the raids broke, alleged Black Axe members across the country left their homes and tried to book flights back to Nigeria. ‘The operation was initiated based on the mutual legal assistance from central authorities of the US,’ said Hawks spokesperson Colonel Katlego Mogale. Since 2018, USSS agents and their Hawks counterparts have been gathering evidence of Black Axe's alleged involvement in scams – including online dating in which lonely women and men were fleeced out of their life savings, and a business e-mail compromise scam – that led them to the men.

Their victims in the US and SA are believed to number in the thousands, but the indictment says the Cape Town Zone’s alleged founder, Perry Osagiede, its alleged current leader Enorense Izevbigie and their ‘council of elders’ (Franklyn Osagiede, Osariemen Clement, Collins Otughwor and Musa Mudashiru) allegedly stole R100m from about 100 US victims. They were not asked to plead. Professor Gary Warner, University of Alabama at Birmingham director of research in computer forensics, said world-famous social media influencer and Instagram celebrity Ramon Abbas, known as Ray HushPuppi, is strongly associated with Black Axe. Sunday Times sources said Abbas was in contact with South African Black Axe members before his arrest in his Versace Hotel suite in Dubai last year.

Full Sunday Times report (subscription needed)