Law enforcement agencies snared several West African crime syndicates as part of an ongoing series of investigations taking aim at fraud and cybercrime.
Interpol today announced preliminary results of Jackal IV, a coordinated international operation targeting organized crime groups in West Africa, with a particular focus on fraud and cybercrime. Law enforcement from 22 countries across six continents worked together to arrest 58 suspects and identify 263 more.
Global law enforcement has been targeting African cybercrime in these Jackal operations for years. Jackal III, which concluded in 2024, led to hundreds of arrests and approximately $3 million in seized assets. The first two Jackal operations in 2022 and 2023 led to approximately 200 arrests in total and millions of dollars more in seized assets.
While multiple organizations have been targeted in these operations, authorities behind Jackal took particular interest in Black Axe, a transnational organized crime network of Nigerian-origin that has been linked to business email compromise, romance scams, cryptocurrency and investment fraud, money laundering, and other cyber-enabled financial crimes.
Interpol said in a press release that Black Axe and similar West African groups “are responsible for a significant share of the world’s cyber-enabled financial fraud.”
Police Act in Four Countries
Participating nations included Austria, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Nigeria, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the US. For Jackal IV, Interpol highlighted action taken across four countries — Argentina, South Africa, Romania and Italy — targeting individuals and operations that supported West African organized crime outfits.
In Argentina, 17 individuals were arrested and 196 were identified for possibly participating in “a major Crime-as-a-Service network.” The network is suspected of providing website domains and money laundering support to West African organized crime groups.
In South Africa, authorities raided seven locations in Johannesburg linked to a syndicate accused of running romance and investment scams targeting retirees in English-speaking countries. Interpol described the structure supporting the schemes as elaborate, “with members designated as ‘conversion’ or ‘retention’ agents and tasked with different stages of the scam.” Authorities seized $2.67 million, blocked 257 bank accounts, and arrested 39 people.
In Italy, authorities identified one individual as possibly connected to a “pan-European money laundering network that used shell companies, remittance services and cash withdrawals to obscure fund origins.” According to Interpol, one account laundered $736,000.
And in Romania, police dismantled a group running a call center-based investment scam touting high returns on stocks or cryptocurrencies. Authorities arrested 11 individuals and seized approximately $379,000 in cash and cryptocurrency, as well as “six real estate properties and several luxury watches.”
Jackal IV Focuses on Criminal Infrastructure
Beyond these four countries, Interpol said the operation enabled the identification of multiple emerging trends such as a rise in West African organized crime groups targeting minors with sextortion schemes.
While Jackal IV led to fewer arrests than previous operations, it placed stronger emphasis on intelligence gathering and disruption of criminal support networks.
Rafe Pilling, senior director of threat intelligence at Sophos, tells Dark Reading the operation appeared to be designed to “map and disrupt,” arguing that identifying facilitators and infrastructure providers can sometimes be more valuable than arrest totals.
Alexander Leslie, principal intelligence analyst at Recorded Future, similarly said the operation’s emphasis on infrastructure may ultimately prove more significant than arrest figures. “Arresting an individual fraudster removes one operator. Understanding and disrupting the infrastructure that dozens of operators depend on can degrade an entire ecosystem.”
On the intelligence front, work in Argentina led to identifying a crime-as-a-service network, reflecting a wider trend of threat actors increasingly relying on external providers. As Interpol noted, this occurs “often through the dark web, to outsource key activities like money laundering and other critical operations.”
By comparison, the first Jackal investigations were focused on arrests and money seizures tied to business email compromise, money mules, romance scams, and, in the case of Jackal III, counterfeit “supernotes,” or bank notes of a particular high quality.
Results are also preliminary; many cases in Operation Jackal IV remain under active investigation, according to Interpol.
Pilling says operations like Jackal IV are unlikely to eliminate criminal threats overnight, but they do increase the operational cost and complexity for criminal groups. For African businesses, he says, the value is twofold.
“First, it reduces some of the immediate criminal capability of the networks being targeted,” Pilling explains. “Second, and perhaps more importantly, it improves international law enforcement visibility into how these groups operate, who supports them, and where their infrastructure exists. That intelligence can support future investigations and more targeted disruption efforts.”
Comments are closed