Law enforcement agencies from 22 countries helped identify 263 suspects and arrested 58 individuals linked to cybercrime networks coordinated by African crime groups.
The “Operation Jackal IV” international joint action targeted West African criminal networks between November 2025 and June 2026.
The operation also focused on disrupting the Black Axe cybercrime syndicate, known for its involvement in global-scale cyber-enabled financial fraud. Most commonly, Black Axe and similar criminal rings are targeting victims in romance scams, cryptocurrency and investment scams, or business email compromise fraud, but they’ve often also been linked to violent crimes.
During Operation Jackal IV, Argentinian law officers made 17 arrests, and they linked 196 suspects to a major Crime-as-a-Service network that provided West African organized crime groups with web domains and money-laundering support.
South African authorities also arrested 39 individuals, blocked 257 bank accounts, and seized $2.67 million from a criminal syndicate that targeted retirees in English-speaking countries in investment and romance scams.
Romanian police arrested another 11 suspects, part of a criminal group linked to a call center that used high returns in stocks or cryptocurrencies to bait victims into sophisticated investment scams, while Italian authorities identified one suspect linked to a pan-European money laundering network that laundered money via shell companies, remittance services, and cash withdrawals.
“Offenders typically contact minors via social media, build trust and coerce them into sharing explicit images or videos. They then threaten to distribute this material to the victim’s contacts unless a ransom is paid,” INTERPOL said.
“Some of these criminal syndicates were also observed procuring Crime-as-a-Service from external providers, often through the dark web, to outsource key activities like money laundering and other critical operations.”
Between December 8 and January 30, African authorities have also arrested 651 suspects in another Interpol-coordinated joint police action, codenamed Operation Red Card 2.0, that spanned 16 countries.
More recently, in July, INTERPOL also announced that law enforcement agencies arrested 5,811 suspects and seized $293 million in illicit assets in a global anti-fraud operation dubbed “Operation First Light 2026,” involving investigators from 97 countries.
Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply.
The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments.
