Interpol piece together details Black Axe, Nigeria’s notorious transnational criminal organisation with presence in Kenya, straddles five continents

Black Axe’s violent organised criminal network undermines economic development and political reform within Nigeria while scamming victims abroad out of billions via cybercrime.

A 21-country Interpol initiative known as Operation Jackal III targeting Black Axe, the Nigerian organised crime group, led to the arrest of 300 suspects and the seizure of $3 million in assets in a sting operation culminating in July 2024. While a victory for law enforcement, the action is unlikely to make a dent in the operations of Black Axe, which has an estimated 30,000 members in dozens of countries and yearly proceeds estimated to exceed $5 billion.

First founded in 1977 at the University of Benin in Edo State as a pan-African Black Power student confraternity, Black Axe has since morphed into a sophisticated multinational criminal enterprise with cells in the United States, Canada, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, among others. The organisation also maintains a foothold in neighbouring West African countries, such as Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, and can be found operating as far afield as China, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore. Nairobi is the organisation’s focal point in eastern Africa.

The proceeds gained from cybercrime have spawned a complex web of money laundering networks spanning the globe.

Known for its violence and brutality in Nigeria, Black Axe members (referred to as Axemen) routinely engage in drug dealing, smuggling, kidnapping and extortion. Axemen also compete over territory with rival criminal groups – like the Maphites, the Supreme Eiye Confraternity, and the Vikings – and are accused of perpetuating a culture of urban violence, political corruption and juridical impunity. Nigeria recorded almost 6,000 gang-related deaths across 31 states from 2006 to 2021.

In its operations abroad, Black Axe members engage in crimes such as drug-trafficking, extortion, and sex worker management. The organisation’s most profitable criminal enterprise, cybercrime, transcends geographic boundaries and is thought to have netted the organisation tens of billions of dollars. Starting out as simple “Yahoo Boys” pulling advance-fee scams via email, many Black Axe members have grown into shrewd cybercriminals who specialise in defrauding businesses out of thousands if not millions of dollars. The proceeds gained from cybercrime have, in turn, spawned a complex web of money laundering networks spanning the globe.

Interpol has identified Black Axe as one of the leading criminal actors responsible for cyber-enabled financial fraud globally. Axemen began by transferring preexisting “419” cash-advance scams (in which, say, a fictional Nigerian Prince needs money to access his inheritance) to the internet in the mid-1990s. By the 2010s, Black Axe members were involved in more sophisticated forms of online fraud, including business email compromise (BEC), a scam that tricks victims into sending money or divulging confidential company information. For example, Axemen stole €91,000 (roughly $98,000) from an Irish plastics manufacturer by impersonating one of their suppliers. Another scheme saw fraudsters pose as concert promoters to defraud the Spanish distributor Imprex of €294,000 (roughly $317,000).

These sums might seem like a drop in the bucket for large firms, but the figures add up. The United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested 13 Black Axe members in 2019 responsible for stealing more than $10 million via cybercrime. The FBI subsequently apprehended 33 Black Axe operators who stole upward of $17 million using BEC and other forms of cyberfraud in 2021. One might think that leading international firms would be too smart to fall for such tactics, but Black Axe is thought to take in between $300-500 million per year using BEC scams in North America alone.

As one observer noted, Black Axe went from “short-con to long-con” from “pickpocket to bank heist” using similar methods of deception they employed with the “419” scams.

The expansive nature of Black Axe’s cybercriminal activity has begotten an impressive global money laundering enterprise. For instance, when Axemen defraud a target abroad, they usually instruct the victim to send the money to an in-country account to avoid the suspicion of sending it to a Nigerian bank. The group then uses an intermediary or “linkman” to transfer the money from said account over to Black Axe’s network of money launderers without attracting the attention of financial regulators. Once they receive the money, Black Axe launderers diffuse the funds into a host of different investments.

One scheme popular in North America is for launderers to buy cars and ship them to Nigeria. Another ploy is to purchase real estate, which drives up housing prices and squeezes out home buyers. These ill-gotten funds may also be invested into business enterprises, outcompeting law-abiding firms who lack access to this capital. Cryptocurrency, which affords owners near anonymity and can be sent instantaneously between digital wallets around the world, is also a key part of Black Axe’s money laundering strategy.

Black Axe launderers and linkmen thrive in countries with lax fiscal regulations and oversight. One of these hubs is Ireland where Nigerian linkman Junior Boboye helped launder several million dollars’ worth of funds for Black Axe before his apprehension in 2018. Another favoured location is the United Arab Emirates where successful Black Axe affiliated launderer Ramon Abbas openly advertised his services and flaunted his wealth on Instagram before his arrest in 2020.

Known as “Hushpuppi,” Abbas operated out of Dubai and not only helped to launder money for Black Axe but also for the Lazarus Group – the notorious North Korean hacker cabal responsible for the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack. While there have been no publicly declared arrests in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Black Axe internal communications show that its money routinely passes through bank accounts in Hong Kong and mainland China due to the PRC’s “non-existent money laundering checks.”

Black Axe launderers and linkmen thrive in countries with lax fiscal regulations and oversight.

Although Black Axe launderers prefer to operate in more fiscally opaque areas of the world, they can do business anywhere and often hide in plain sight. Ikechukwu Amadi, a resident of Mississauga, Ontario (Canada), was jailed in 2019 for his participation in a $5-billion money laundering scheme. Ghaleb Alaumary, a wealthy resident of the same quiet Toronto suburb, was sentenced in the United States in 2021 for laundering tens of millions of dollars stolen using various wire transfer and bank fraud schemes.

In Nigeria, Black Axe is known not as a sophisticated, white-collar criminal organisation but rather as a violent gang. Images of their enemies’ corpses routinely appear in the press and on social media, striking terror and outrage in the hearts of Nigerians across the country. In large cities like Lagos, Port Harcourt, and Benin City, citizens face threats of violence, rape, and extortion from Black Axe members and risk being caught in the crossfire of intergang warfare. Fatalities linked to such gang violence are estimated to have doubled since 2019. Others worry their children will be killed or one day indoctrinated into the criminal organisation.

Nigerian police arrest three Black Axe gang members.

This concern is not unfounded given that Black Axe and other gangs typically recruit new members from universities and secondary schools. Known locally as a cult, Black Axe is infamous for its shadowy and sinister initiation practices, during which pledges are often beaten unconscious or sometimes instructed to murder a stranger or even a family member. After being invited in, initiates swear an oath to Korofo, “the unseen God,” and gain proximity to an underground world of black magic practitioners and juju, the use of which Nigerians both fear and revile.

Once in the gang, it can be very difficult to break free. Deserters can face violent reprisals at the hands of old comrades or come under attack from rival groups after forsaking cult protection. Others join vigilante associations that end up perpetuating the endless cycle of violence by taking the fight to gang members.

Black Axe operates within a complex and opaque organisational structure. In Nigeria, people often view Black Axe as synonymous with its legal parent group, the Neo-Black Movement of Africa (NBM). NBM is a confraternity registered with the Nigerian Corporate Affairs Commission and has over one million members.

While NBM affords the same array of social and professional networking as other confraternities, the group is undoubtedly buoyed by illicit Black Axe funds. One could therefore think of Black Axe as NBM’s criminal wing.

Exploiting vulnerable members of the Nigerian diaspora is a key part of Black Axe’s operations.

Much remains unknown of Black Axe’s organisational structure, though it is led by a president who oversees the Black Axe hierarchy with a high council of elders. Operationally, Black Axe is managed by a national body comprised of a separate council of elders and a zonal executive council headed by a chairman.

This structure presides over zone leaders who manage operations in specific geographic areas. There are an estimated 60 zones covering every major Nigerian municipality. Internationally, there are believed to be six zones in North America, two in South America, seven in Asia, 16 in Europe, and four in Africa. International zones are sometimes organised by country, other times by city. There are also more specialised roles: chief priests organise rituals and make amulets for members’ protection; butchers enforce discipline and organise attacks against rivals; “cryers“ oversee communications; and “ihaze” function as cells’ treasurers. Below them is a layer of soldiers or “streets” who are used as footmen in criminal operations and are expected to pay money up the chain to leaders or “socials.”

Black Axe’s organisational structure tends to be more adaptive and opportunistic in the field of cybercrime. As one security official who tracks Black Axe observes, Axemen “may be working with some guys one week, [but the] next week they’re working with some other guys.” Another expert notes that “an individual leading one operation [for Black Axe] may seamlessly transition to a subordinate role in a different [cyber] criminal endeavour [… and this lack of hierarchy extends] to the remuneration structure, where, unlike traditional organised crime, compensation for BEC roles is variable and dependent on the perceived value of each function.”

• A Tell report / Republished with permission from Africa Centre for Strategic Studies/ By Dr Matthew La Lime – research associate with ACSS.