The International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) has arrested over 1006 suspects across 19 African countries for participating in online credit card fraud schemes that have left thousands of victims in losses and financial damage.
The suspects were arrested in an operation dubbed Operation Serengeti, which has been going on from September to October 2024, conducted by Interpol with the help of AFRIPOL, the African Union’s policing organization.
Operation Serengeti targeted people suspected of cybercrimes, including those using ransomware, digital extortion, business email compromise (BEC), online scams, and phishing schemes on the African continent, hence leading to the dismantling of 134,089 malicious networks across 19 African nations.
The Secretary General of INTERPOL, Valdecy Urquiza, said that the suspects stole about $193 million from more than 35,000 victims from across the world by manipulating the banking system security protocols using the credit cards of the victims, rerouting stolen funds through SWIFT transactions to companies in the UAE, Nigeria, and China, and laundering them through digital asset platforms.
Urquiza said that the internet service providers of the AFRIPOL member countries also played a vital role in this operation by sharing intelligence, supporting analysis, and disrupting criminal activities.
The service providers, she said, availed on-site support and offered round-the-clock remote assistance to patch vulnerabilities and secure critical infrastructure for the participating member countries.
’’This is just the tip of the iceberg; however, these arrests alone will save countless potential future victims from real personal and financial pain because we are going to continue targeting these criminal groups worldwide,” Urquiza noted.
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The Executive Director of AFRIPOL, Ambassador Jalel Chelba, said that Operation Serengeti was carried out with the funding of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office, the German Federal Foreign Office, and the Council of Europe.
Chelba added that Operation Serengeti has helped enhance the ability of the security agencies of African countries to fight cybercrime by facilitating key arrests and deepening insights into cybercrime trends.
’’Through Serengeti, AFRIPOL is now going to fight cybercrime by focusing on emerging threats like AI-driven malware and advanced attack techniques,” Chelba said.
There is significant concern regarding the growing volume and sophistication of cybercrime attacks, ranging from multi-level marketing scams to industrial-scale credit card fraud, which various victims from African countries have fallen prey to.
In the year 2024, in Kenya, officers cracked a case of online credit card fraud linked to losses of USD 8.6 million. The funds, stolen through fraudulent scripts run after altering the banking system’s security protocol, were promptly redistributed by the group via SWIFT to companies in the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, and China and, subsequently, to digital asset institutions offering trading and financial services regulated in multiple jurisdictions. Nearly two dozen arrests have been made so far.
