Outside nightclubs in Cape Town and Johannesburg, brand new Ferraris, Bentleys and Mercedes-Benzes roar in defiance of a depressed economy. While Covid has caused many to suffer, the owners of these vehicles have been “popping bottles” of champagne until long after curfew.
Monday night, however, was their last night of freedom. 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 on 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's Secret Service (USSS) and FBI, descended on nine properties in Table Bay, Cape Town, after a three-year investigation, to sever the head of one of the world’s biggest organised crime syndicates.
And when the news of the arrests broke, alleged Black Axe members across the country left their homes and checked into hotels, 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 Col 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.
“Seven leaders of the Cape Town Zone of the Neo Black Movement of Africa, also known as Black Axe, and an eighth man who conspired with a Black Axe leader, were charged with multiple federal crimes relating to internet scams they perpetrated from SA,” said acting US state attorney Rachael Honig in a statement on Wednesday.
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, 52, its alleged current leader Enorense Izevbigie, 45, and their “council of elders” — Franklyn Edosa Osagiede, 37, Osariemen Eric Clement, 35, Collins Owhofasa Otughwor, 37, and Musa Mudashiru, 33 — allegedly stole R100m from about 100 US victims. They were not asked to plead.
“[The suspects] all originally from Nigeria, are charged with wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, spanning from 2011 to 2021,” the US justice department said in a statement, adding that four were also charged with “aggravated identity theft”.
Toritseju Gabriel Otubu, 41, was charged with fraud, identity theft, and money laundering while another man, Prince Ibeh, was charged in connection with a separate fraud case. A manhunt involving Interpol, the Hawks and the police is under way for a ninth suspect, an alleged Cape Town Zone leader, who managed to evade arrest on Tuesday.
CELEBRITY MAFIA
The Black Axe allegedly counts famous musicians and social media celebrities among its members.
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.
In a statement after his indictment in July, the FBI’s Los Angeles field office assistant director Kristi Johnson described Abbas as “among the most high-profile money launderers in the world”. Proof of Abbas’s connection with the South African Black Axe is likely in evidence sealed by a US court.
“They’re sealed because there’s other people who haven’t been arrested yet who would have been implicated if the documents were unsealed. There are more arrests coming related to HushPuppi,” said Warner, who has worked with US law enforcement authorities on Black Axe cases.
Warner and investigators told the Sunday Times that SA is a lucrative sphere of operation for Black Axe.
Among their high-profile members, several well-placed sources said, is Abdul Olatunji, owner of the Hydro Lounge nightclub in Sandton and the alleged leader of the Black Axe Midrand Zone. South African police sources said Olatunji pleaded guilty to fraud in the Palm Ridge specialised commercial crimes court in July and will be sentenced next month for scamming two South African businesses using a business e-mail compromise scam.
Another man allegedly connected to the group is Opaogun Oluwasegun Akinola, known as Opa 6ix, an Instagram celebrity with 572,000 followers who was a guest DJ at Hydro Lounge. In August, the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission said Akinola was wanted on charges of criminal conspiracy, internet-related fraud and obtaining money by false pretence.
On Friday afternoon, Akinola posted a status update on his Instagram account of himself driving a Mercedes-Benz past Durban’s Moses Mabhida Stadium. He did not respond to requests for comment and blocked this reporter.
Law enforcement sources said the Cape Town Zone was so important to Black Axe that its global leaders, based at its headquarters in Benin City, Nigeria, and in the US, UK and Italy, would travel to Cape Town for annual meetings.
Warner said SA was key for the syndicate because Nigerians “have a difficult time getting visas and travel permits to get into other parts of the world because everyone knows Nigeria is famous for crime, but SA is not famous for crime”.
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“The Nigerians who come to SA marry South African women and obtain South African citizenship that eases their travel to other parts of the world,” he said.
The Hawks alleged that those arrested in Cape Town this week ran a sophisticated online dating scam that “allegedly preyed on victims, many of whom are vulnerable widows or divorcees who were led to believe that they were in genuine romantic relationships but were scammed out of their hard-earned money”.
“The suspects used social media websites, online dating websites to find and connect with their victims. Other modus operandi used includes business e-mail compromise, where e-mail accounts are diverted in order to change banking details,” Mogale said.
The US department of justice said on Wednesday that the accused allegedly “used the bank accounts of victims and individuals with US-based financial accounts to transfer the money to SA”, and sometimes “convinced victims to open accounts in the US” that they would use themselves. After that, they would allegedly launder the money through businesses.
HUNDREDS OF VICTIMS
Though the case relates to crimes committed against victims in the US, victims in SA are left wondering whether the fake online alias they lost their heart to might be one of them. Law enforcement sources said hundreds of South African victims have lost everything, taking out second bonds, cashing in pensions, and borrowing from family to try to help a “wealthy globetrotting construction manager” out of a pickle when he lost his passport before boarding a flight.
That’s what happened to a Cape Town woman, who asked not to be named for fear of her family disowning her. In a few short months, the recently widowed woman in her 50s handed over R100,000 to a man she had never physically met.
The woman said multiple men used social media profiles under the same alias to keep her glued to her phone and her laptop.
“I can’t believe that I, with my personality, could fall for this. They make you soft before you get there. He makes you feel good, he makes you feel special,” she said, adding that her scammers used deep-fake social media filters during video calls to make them look like those whose identities they stole. The man she spoke with on a video chat appeared to resemble a blurred version of his WhatsApp profile picture, she said.
“If I didn’t have my friends around me I would go lie down and not stand up. I was so disappointed in myself,” she said.
Cape Town’s Long Street, where Black Axe members flaunted their wealth and flashy sports cars, was quiet on Thursday night. A police roadblock stopped and searched every vehicle. One of the group’s leaders is still on the run. A restaurant in Parklands where they used to gather was also quiet.
When news of the arrests broke, law enforcement and Nigerian community members told the Sunday Times that Black Axe members were panicking.
“Most of the Yahoo boys are presently looking for where to park their big cars because they believe that they will be questioned on how they got their wealth. Some of them now go to a friend’s house to park their cars while some go to the garages to park there and sell them to the garage owners at a very much cheaper price,” said one community source.
HOW THEY OPERATE
Once inducted, Black Axe members earn their keep by sitting in front of computers with a script, perfected using the hired help of outsourced English-language professionals and aimed at as many social media users as possible.
Experts in the way the syndicate operates said the scammers work shifts and the gains from successful scams are pooled, laundered and distributed. The proceeds are splashed on clothes and cars.
Investigators witnessed Black Axe members working from properties in Table View, and others were tracked to a laptop belonging to a Nigerian charismatic church in Parklands.
According to the indictment, Osagiede was known to his online lovers as “Rob Nicolella” or “Alan Salomon”, while Izevbigie was “Richy Izevbigie”, Franklyn Osagiede was “Dave Hewitt” and “Bruce Dupont”, Clement was “Aiden Wilson”, and Otughwor “Philip Coughlan”, Otubu was “Andy Richards” and “Ann Petersen”.
The men allegedly laundered their money buying second-hand luxury cars at auction and selling them at a mark-up, and through alcohol sales at Sandton nightclubs.
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