Five alleged Black Axe leaders flown to New Jersey over a decade of romance scams

Five men landed in New Jersey on 11 September and stood in front of a federal judge in Trenton on Monday. Prosecutors say they ran romance scams out of Cape Town for a decade.

Perry Osagiede, Franklyn Edosa Osagiede, Osariemen Eric Clement, Collins Owhofasa Otughwor and Musa Mudashiru were extradited from South Africa, where they had been arrested in 2021. The US charges them with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, and two of them face additional wire fraud and aggravated identity theft counts. Perry Osagiede is alleged to have founded the Cape Town zone of the Neo Black Movement of Africa, better known as Black Axe. The indictment covers 2011 to 2021 and more than 100 victims.

The method is depressingly ordinary, and that is rather the point. Invented identities on social media and dating sites, VoIP numbers so a call appears to come from nearby, months of patient conversation, then a request for money. When a victim stopped sending it, prosecutors say the group threatened to publish intimate photographs it had coaxed out of them earlier. Wire fraud and money laundering carry up to twenty years each. The Justice Department puts the total taken from Americans by overseas romance and investment scams since 2023 at roughly 12.7 billion dollars, and these arrests follow Operation Jackal IV in August, which picked up 58 people tied to Black Axe networks across 22 countries.

Two habits defeat most of this. Run a reverse image search on a profile photo before you get attached, and treat a persistent refusal to appear on video as an answer in itself. Never send a photograph you would not want forwarded. No program on your PC can stop a conversation like this, though Tendvane's privacy and accounts check does go over your sign-in and recovery settings, which is the next door these crews try once the extortion starts.