The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC) report revealed that South Africa is a prominent base for international scammers.
Image: File
South Africa has emerged as a prominent base for international scammers who operate in foreign countries (targeting victims abroad) and frequently move their business locations to evade law enforcement.
This is according to the latest report from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC) - A World of Deceit, which revealed how criminals find it easy to set up operations in South Africa and exploit relocation to avoid detention.
Cameroonian, Ghanaian, and Israeli syndicates (involving high-pressure and unsolicited calls from scammers selling worthless, nonexistent, or overpriced stocks, crypto, or forex to steal money) operate in South Africa, but Nigerian confraternities play the largest role by far
The report stated that there are five Nigerian confraternities known to operate in South Africa, the largest of which is Black Axe, which has been in South Africa since at least the early 2000s, and whose primary activities are business email compromise (BEC) fraud and romance scamming.
These centres are clustered primarily around Johannesburg and Cape Town, specifically in areas with large concentrations of Nigerian expats where support networks offer a ‘soft landing’ for new confraternity recruits coming to South Africa for the first time.
Nigerian churches, both in Nigeria and South Africa, also play a prominent role.
These centres, according to GI-TOC, are typically based in houses, particularly luxury houses in security estates, and hotel rooms or high-end apartments.
The report stated that Nigerian confraternities favour these types of high-security set-ups partly because they pose challenges to law enforcement teams attempting to conduct surveillance or gain access, buying valuable time for confraternity members to destroy evidence or evade arrest.
Security expert Andy Mashaile backed the findings of the report, adding that most of these criminals operate in areas such as Morningside and Rivonia.
Mashaile said Crime Intelligence has been absent in this area.
Romance and fraud scams are a significant and growing threat in South Africa, with scammers reportedly using AI to create realistic video chats and voice clones to impersonate real people in real-time. These criminals also monitor online activity, including posts, to identify vulnerabilities such as loneliness or recent loss and tailor their approach.
Some victims have reported being lured into “prayer rooms” where voices, supposedly of ancestors, give financial instructions using technological voice enhancements.
In 2024, a Johannesburg woman, Jabu Nxumalo, was scammed out of R500,000 by a Ugandan man she met on Tinder who went by the alias “Deron Mundari”.
A Pretoria teacher also lost R2,4m to a scammer she knew as “Mark Kagame”, who used a “prayer room” scheme involving deepfake-style voices to mimic ancestors.
In March 2026, three suspects were arrested in Cape Town for swindling a woman in her 70s out of R14 million over a two-year period (2017–2018) using a fake online profile and flirtatious language.
According to the SAPS, scammers also build a false sense of trust, often presenting themselves as the “ideal match” over several weeks or months, before fabricating stories of financial hardship or investment opportunities to steal money.
They frequently target professionals or older individuals, persuading them to liquidate pensions or take out large loans, with recent cases involving losses in the millions.
GI-TOC added that basing themselves in South Africa has a range of benefits for expat scammers, such as the elevated standard of living in cities like Cape Town and Johannesburg, and the country’s world-class internet and financial infrastructure.
A cyber forensic expert who spoke to GI-TOC stated that: “We often will see that the Lagos guys, when they do well, will begin to travel back and forth to South Africa regularly, in the same way that they’ll go to South Africa and then to America, or Europe, or Dubai; in the same way that they’ll go to Malaysia and then to Europe or America or Dubai from Malaysia.”
The report stated that South Africa also offers an opportunity to circumvent Western scrutiny over visa applications; the US, for instance, has strict policies for Nigeria due to concerns about organised crime members from the country moving to the US.
On the other hand, some confraternity members marry South African women, often as part of a transactional arrangement, in order to fast-track getting a South African passport, which eases their onward movement to Western countries, as South African passports attract less scrutiny than do Nigerian passports.
“More practically, scammers know that asking victims to send money to South Africa will not raise the same level of suspicion and scrutiny as sending money to Nigeria. There are also apps, such as PayPal, that work in South Africa but not in Nigeria.
“In short, South Africa offers many advantages for relocating scammers and very little exposure to risk - a rare situation for migrating criminals,” read the report.
GI-TOC said Nigerians involved in scam centres also collaborate with non-confraternity South African associates, who are paid to register bank accounts in their names.
The confraternity provides these associates with burner phones on which they install a banking app linked to their account and hand the phones back to the confraternity.
manyane.manyane@inl.co.za