Police in 21 countries arrested 1,462 suspects and took down 10,909 malicious networks in Operation Serengeti III, an INTERPOL-coordinated cybercrime sweep across Africa that ran from June 29 to August 31, 2026. Investigators recovered more than $105 million in illicit funds.
Financial investigators tied the networks to losses exceeding $385 million and identified 65,929 victims of fraud, ransomware, business email compromise, online scams and digital extortion.
Twenty of the countries were African, and the 21st was the United States. Before the operation began, INTERPOL gave investigators intelligence on suspicious domains, IP addresses and command-and-control infrastructure, the servers criminals use to send instructions to compromised machines. Private firms including Group-IB, Kaspersky, Fortinet, Team Cymru and Meta helped identify targets and map the networks.
In Uganda, authorities broke up two transnational fraud rings and arrested 365 foreign nationals. The rings ran rotating call centers with scripted pitches, fake trading platforms and fraudulent websites, steering pensioners into investments that did not exist. Their victims were in Asia.
Illegal cryptocurrency mining centre in Angola (Source: INTERPOL)
In Angola, investigators shut two illegal cryptocurrency mining centers, arrested nine suspects and seized more than 2,000 mining devices plus six illegal power transformation stations. The electrical equipment alone was worth more than $1 million.
Nigerian authorities arrested a suspect behind a phishing and business email compromise operation, the kind of scam where criminals pose as a colleague or supplier to redirect payments. The suspect harvested software credentials and collected roughly 2.1 million email addresses, and investigators recovered a luxury car they believe was bought with the proceeds. A second Nigerian case, an investment fraud pushed through messaging apps, led to one arrest and traced more than $2.4 million in suspected proceeds, much of it laundered through cryptocurrency.
Authorities also dismantled a malicious mobile loan app scheme in Tanzania, disrupted a vehicle import fraud network running on social media in Gabon, and arrested 30 suspects tied to a cybercrime operation in the Republic of Congo.
“While cybercrime is increasingly borderless, international cooperation remains one of the most effective tools for disrupting criminal networks, recovering criminal assets and protecting communities from digital harm,” said INTERPOL’s Director of Cybercrime Neal Jetton.
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