Authorities arrested 260 cybercrime suspects during a two-week operation spanning 14 African countries, Interpol announced Friday. The globally coordinated summertime crackdown dubbed “Operation Contender 3.0” targeted criminal networks that facilitated romance scams and sextortion, officials said. 

Interpol said total losses attributed to the scam syndicates amounted to about $2.8 million, involving almost 1,500 victims. Authorities seized USB drives, SIM cards, forged documents and dismantled 81 cybercrime infrastructure networks across the continent.

“Cybercrime units across Africa are reporting a sharp rise in digital-enabled crimes such as sextortion and romance scams,” Cyril Gout, acting executive director of police services at Interpol, said in a statement. “The growth of online platforms has opened new opportunities for criminal networks to exploit victims, causing both financial loss and psychological harm.”

Authorities in Ghana arrested 68 people, seized 835 devices and identified 108 victims who lost a combined $450,000, $70,000 of which was recovered. The suspects allegedly used fake profiles, forged identities and stolen images to deceive victims using multiple schemes, including fake courier and customs shipment fees, and sextortion for blackmail.

Police in Senegal arrested 22 suspects who allegedly defrauded 120 victims on social media and dating platforms of about $34,000 combined. 

In Cote d’Ivoire, police arrested 24 suspects and identified 809 victims who were allegedly manipulated to share intimate images before they were blackmailed. Angola authorities arrested eight people for allegedly scamming 28 domestic and international victims via social media. 

Group-IB and Trend Micro assisted in the investigation, and other countries participating in the effort included Benin, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Guinea, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia.

“By working closely with our member countries and private sector partners, we remain committed to disrupting and dismantling the groups that prey on vulnerable individuals online,” Gout said.

Operation Contender 3.0 occurred, in part, during a much larger Interpol cybercrime crackdown in Africa that resulted in the arrest of 1,209 alleged cybercriminals. Authorities said financial losses attributed to cybercrime rings disrupted during Operation Serengeti 2.0 neared $485 million from almost 88,000 victims.

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The FBI released a trove of research on The Com last week, warning that the sprawling cybercriminal network of minors and young adults is growing rapidly and splintering into three primary subsets described by officials as Hacker Com, In Real Life Com and Extortion Com.

The warnings lay out how The Com’s thousands of members, typically between 11 and 25 years old, pose a rising threat, especially to youth online, the FBI said. Criminal acts committed by these multiple, interconnected networks include swatting, extortion and sextortion of minors, production and distribution of child sexual abuse material, violent crime and various other cybercrimes, the bureau said.

“The motivations behind the criminal activity vary, but often fall within one of the following: financial gain, retaliation, ideology, sexual gratification and notoriety,” the FBI said in a public service announcement.

Crimes attributed to members of The Com have grown increasingly complex, with perpetrators going to great lengths to mask identities, hide financial transactions and launder money. The Com generally targets young and impressionable people for recruitment on gaming sites and social media platforms to indoctrinate them into their ideology, officials said.

Various subsections of this group have been linked to high-profile crimes over the past few years. In April, two men accused of leading a Com offshoot known as “764” were charged with operating an international child exploitation enterprise. Scattered Spider, another offshoot, tends to focus on cybercrime like ransomware and data extortion. 

Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B, commended the level of detail the FBI shared across the series of PSAs, noting that the agency left nothing of importance out of its warnings. Nixon has studied domestic and English-speaking cybercrime and tracked its rise for more than a decade.

“The assessments in this PSA are consistent with what we have seen. There has been a population explosion in The Com and it is good to see law enforcement respond to this — not just with a PSA but with real crackdowns,” she said.

“Hopefully this PSA helps the public understand that many cybercrime arrests nowadays implicate gang violence and sexual crime against children, by children.”

Hacker Com

Hacker Com members are involved in a vast array of cybercrime activities, including distributed denial-of-service attacks, personally identifiable information theft, the sale of government email accounts, ransomware attacks, phishing, malware development and deployment, cryptocurrency theft, intrusions and SIM swapping, according to the FBI.

Scattered Spider, which is responsible for attacks on more than 100 businesses since 2022, is included in this subset.

This subset of The Com uses remote access trojans, phishing kits, voice over internet protocol providers, voice modulators, virtual private networks, cryptocurrency cash-out services, live-streaming services and encrypted email domains, officials said.

“Open-source information indicates Hacker Com groups are responsible for high-profile attacks and intrusions and have affiliations with ransomware organizations,” the FBI said in a PSA dedicated solely to Hacker Com.

The group also has been observed using the same attack methods against each other. The FBI warning details how internal conflicts are common among members of The Com. Personal disputes or rivalries — often over cryptocurrency — frequently lead Hacker Com members to attack and steal from one another, the FBI said.

In Real Life (IRL) Com

Some Com subgroups have gone beyond digital means, offering swat-for-hire services and targeting members for swatting and doxxing, kidnapping and physical extortion, which the FBI refers to as “IRL Com.” 

“The intensification of these online conflicts has resulted in the emergence of a new layer of The Com known as In Real Life (IRL) Com, which includes subgroups that aim to facilitate real world acts of violence, oftentimes resulting from online conflicts,” the FBI said.

Acts of physical violence have intensified and expanded to other layers of The Com, as multiple subgroups adopt similar methods of retaliation, the FBI said in a PSA dedicated solely to IRL Com. Some subgroups advertise contracts on messaging apps or other social media networks to commit violence or swatting for payment. 

“IRL Com groups also see swatting as a way of gaining credibility among members; the more attention a swatting incident gets, the more attention the member receives from the group,” the FBI said. “Leaders from IRL Com groups may use swatting to ensure members of the group remain obedient. When members of the IRL Com group disobey orders or refuse to comply with demands, the member or the member’s family may become the target of swatting.”

Extortion Com

The FBI also released a PSA about a subgroup it calls “Extortion Com,” which “systematically targets underage females” and vulnerable populations, including children and those who struggle with mental health issues.

“Victims are typically between the ages of 10 and 17 years old, but the FBI has seen some victims as young as 9 years old,” the FBI said in its PSA. “Threat actors often groom their victims by first establishing a trusting or romantic relationship before eventually manipulating and coercing them into engaging in escalating harmful behavior designed to shame and isolate them.”

Officials said these acts are driven by a range of personal motives, including the pursuit of social status, sexual gratification or a sense of belonging. 

The FBI warns that members of this subgroup manipulate or coerce their victims to produce pornographic material or other videos depicting animal cruelty and self-harm, oftentimes further threatening to share the material with victims’ families, friends or other public communities on the internet.

Two alleged leaders of the child sextortion group 764 were arrested and charged for directing and distributing CSAM in April. The two men, Leonidas Varagiannis and Prasan Nepal, are accused of exploiting at least eight minor victims, some as young as 13 years old, and face charges that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Officials advised people to look for warning signs that a victim may be targeted by The Com and shared resources for help, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline and Take It Down service. Victims are encouraged to retain all information about an incident and immediately report to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center and an FBI Field Office.

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