Operation Red Card seized a total of 1,842 devices between November 2024 and February 2025, which were used in mobile banking, investment and messaging app fraud, involving more than 5,000 victims.
Before the operation began, Interpol held discussions and exchanged criminal intelligence with seven African countries and cybersecurity companies Group-IB, Kaspersky Lab and Trend Micro. These cybersecurity companies used the data collected to gain an in-depth understanding of the modus operandi of criminal gangs.
The seven countries participating in the law enforcement operation are Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Togo and Zambia. The law enforcement agencies of each country obtained target intelligence and then initiated arrest operations. The Nigerian police arrested 130 suspects on suspicion of investment fraud and operating online casinos. As many as 113 of the suspects are not Nigerian nationals, which means that foreign criminal suspects set up fraud centers in Nigeria.
Criminal gangs hide illegal income in cryptocurrencies while recruiting people from different countries and speaking many different languages. Some members of these fraud centers may also be victims of human trafficking, that is, they are attracted by high-paying jobs and are tricked into fraud centers and engage in fraud work under the threat of criminal bosses.
The Zambian police arrested 14 suspects who belonged to the same cybercriminal gang. The gang invaded the victims' mobile phones through malicious links and installed malware. This allowed the criminal gang to control SMS accounts and access bank applications, while also spreading fraudulent information to others through the victims' mobile phones.
The South African police arrested 40 suspects and confiscated 53 computers and more than 1,000 SIM cards. These SIM cards were used by Maochi (MultipleAccessUnit) to send fraudulent text messages to a large number of users for phishing.
Rwandan police have arrested 45 guilty suspects in connection with a network of social engineering scams that defrauded victims of more than $305,000 in 2024, using a tactic of gathering target information and then impersonating correspondence workers or pretending to be injured relatives seeking financial help.
The traditional fraud project in some African countries is BEC business email fraud. This kind of fraud is more concentrated in Nigeria. Therefore, these scammers are also called Nigerian boys internationally. Nigerian boys mainly make up emails through various free mailboxes to commit fraud. For example, they pretend to be suppliers of certain companies and send false bank accounts, or hide Trojan viruses in emails on the pretext of purchasing.
However, as Southeast Asia continues to crack down on telecom fraud, more and more criminal gangs have moved to Africa. It is estimated that the experience of telecom fraud has been spread to fraudsters in Africa. However, it is also extremely difficult to completely eliminate fraud gangs in Africa.