Published 11th Oct, 2023

By Tola Owoyele

The Black Axe, a global confraternity which originated from Nigeria, has been described as the group that runs the biggest criminal operation in the world.

This claim was made by Ken Foy, a crime reporter for the Irish Independent, who has been investigating the activities of the organisation for years.

“They are considered to be arguably the biggest criminal organisation in the world,” said Foy when he appeared on The Indo Daily, a podcast, on October 9.

“Black Axe has over 30,000 members around the world and presently, Ireland is a personal stronghold for the cult group.”

Foy described the Black Axe as a sophisticated and well-organised group that carries out fraudulent operations regularly in Ireland.

“It is not known that a large number of the gang operate in the country,” said Foy, while describing how the organisation perpetrates fraudulent crimes.

“They recruit money mules, who are mostly college students and young people, to assist them in laundering money stolen from innocent people.

“The mules mostly find the reward attractive because they are in need of quick cash.”

The mules were also said to be at the lowest level of the organisation’s structure. Foy stated that another set of members within the Black Axe hierarchy are known as the herders.

The herders were said to be in charge of the recruitment of the mules and see to the distribution of proceeds of fraud to different accounts all around the world.

“The herders in turn report to their supervisors known as the managers using encrypted messages,” said Foy.

“The herders do not also always know the identity of the bosses or managers they report to, making it difficult for the Gardai (the national police and security service of Ireland) to know who to go after in terms of making arrests.”

Foy said the Black Axe had been perpetrating fraudulent crimes in Ireland for 20 years before the country’s security agencies got to know of its operations.

‘They have become a very big Irish problem,” said Foy.

The Black Axe started out in the ’70s as a Nigerian university confraternity. Over the years, it metamorphosed into a huge organised crime organisation that mostly dispossessed its victims of their life savings through romance fraud. Most of the victims were poached by the members of the organisation via emails and social media platforms.

Though majorly known for internet scams and money laundering, the Black Axe is also suspected to be involved in drug trade in Ireland.

In August, and after making 34 arrests in Ireland alone, the Gardai stated that the Black Axe had laundered as much as €64 million through its operations in the country in recent years.

Despite the arrest of many Black Axe members in Ireland, the Gardai believes the organisation is still running many fraudulent activities through a wide range of channels in Ireland.

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