By Perry Duffin
A Sydney father was part of a Nigerian scam that took millions of dollars off lonely Australian women and defrauded businesses, siphoning the money to a terrifying African “blood cult”.
Ugochukwu George Anyakorah was arrested after a raid on his North Rocks apartment in mid-2023, where police found evidence that the 33-year-old mental health support worker was moonlighting as a “facilitator” for a massive network of cyberscammers.
Ugochukwu George Anyakorah worked for a cyberscam syndicate linked to a Nigerian campus cult, according to court documents.Credit: Jamie Brown
The arrest occured a year after the US FBI contacted Australian authorities in May 2022, warning they had tracked west African crime group the Buccaneers running cyberscams in Australia.
The Buccaneers are just one of Nigeria’s so-called “campus cults”. Part student club, part organised crime gang, the secretive groups initiate new members and terrify victims through gothic, satanic rituals.
Messages sourced from Anyakorah’s devices showed he was in an encrypted chat with 52 other members, who were sharing 558 bank accounts from 28 countries, a court document seen by this masthead says.
Anyakorah and a second man in Australia, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had discussed 71 accounts, most of which were located in Australia.
“Sixteen accounts had been reported by the victim or bank as fraudulent, over $11.7m has been identified as fraudulently deposited, or attempted to be deposited, into those accounts,” the police document reads.
Suspected members of Black Axe being rounded up in Italy in 2018. Credit: Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
Anyakorah’s role in the network was essentially to take the money, which cyberscammers extracted from victims, and move it through the banking and cryptocurrency systems.
Anyakorah would ultimately plead guilty to handling $890,000, the proceeds of crime, and was sentenced to four years in prison in March. He will be eligible for release in 2027.
Data seized from Anyakorah’s phones would reveal “a number of communications and links to the Buccaneers Association of Nigeria”.
The campus cults are accused of horrific violence in Nigeria, while abroad, they engage in drug and human trafficking. But most of their money comes through cyberscams in the West.
“West African organised crime groups are based in a range of countries around the world and rely on a web of networks, associates and facilitators to commit cyber-based scams and move the money they have stolen out of countries, like Australia, into their pockets,” AFP Detective Acting Superintendent Nuckhley Succar told this masthead.
In Australia, Anyakorah and his collaborators found many targets and an effective method.
A hat bearing the insignia used by the Black Axe Mafia, seized by European police.
The gang would find emails that had been compromised, probably in data breaches, to send legitimate-looking invoices directing payment to one of their stolen bank accounts.
In 2022, a 77-year-old Townsville woman handed over $46,950 to a man she met online named “Robert”.
But Robert, his high-paying job on an oil rig and his desperate money problems were all fake. Instead, it was a cyberscammer, with Anyakorah providing the banking details.
The woman’s money was never recovered.
Two months later, a 56-year-old woman in Perth matched with “Richard” on another dating site.
Richard’s job on an oil rig, his $3.5 million contract and his money woes were all lies as well, but the woman handed over $174,000 in 23 payments to the gang before realising.
“I cannot explain how upset I am,” the woman wrote to Richard’s profile.
“I have done everything, and I feel like I have (been) exploited. I have my own life and work and my health.”
Meanwhile, in Brighton, Victoria, a woman paid $79,000 to a gang-controlled NAB account after receiving an email invoice from a BMW dealership for her new car in 2019.
She realised the money had gone to scammers when she arrived to pick up her new BMW, and the dealership staff discovered their emails had been compromised.
Lagos, in Nigeria, is home to 25 million people. “Confraternities” or campus cult offshoots have engaged in horrific violence in the region for decades.Credit: Istock
In August 2022, a company that provides medical alert technology to elderly patients paid $22,911 into a Melbourne bank account.
A minerals company paid $173,000 to a US bank account in January 2023.
A pastoral company, a law firm, and family-run trade businesses across NSW and Australia all similarly made massive payments, often over $100,000.
Most of the money would never be recovered.
Nigeria’s blood cults
Every few months, the Administrative Review Tribunal, which determines the fate of refugees, takes evidence from Nigerians claiming to have fallen prey to campus cults, including the Buccaneers, Black Axe Mafia and Pyrates.
One Nigerian refugee in November 2023 told the tribunal she and her husband needed to stay in Australia because, as Christians, they would be targeted if they returned home.
The woman told the tribunal her family had turned their backs on a cult after witnessing a horrific ritual involving her father’s corpse.
“She returned to the east for her father’s burial and saw the horrors of this secret society during a ceremony in a sacred grove which involved incantations and her mother severing her father’s head with a knife, which was put on a stake, and devotees drank the blood that drained from his head,” the AAT wrote.
“[The wife] claims she discovered that taking part in any cleansing ritual would involve the blood sacrifice of her husband and two of her children.”
Other refugees have claimed they were former members of the campus cults or had been pressured to join through physical beatings and stalking. Often, they speak about mysterious illnesses and curses.
“They were the people who orchestrated the death of my father; the cult kept demanding blood from him,” one refugee wrote in 2023.
“I kept on receiving threat letters from the Ogboni cult group with blood as the signature each time, and that’s why my mother fled the village with us.”
The cults’ barbaric attacks frequently make headlines in Nigeria, and the Australian government acknowledges both their existence and danger.
“Membership generally involves a violent initiation, which can include beatings and rape,” the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade wrote of the cults in its 2018 country report on Nigeria.
And Interpol’s Operation Jackal last year rounded up hundreds of members of Nigerian organised cult crime groups in a global crackdown.
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