CAPE TOWN - For the victims, it started with a message. A stranger appeared online, claimed to be a romantic interest heading to Cape Town for construction work, and spent weeks or months building what felt like a real relationship. Then came the emergency: a mugging in a foreign country, a faulty crane at a construction site, legal fees after an accident, or foreign taxes blocking the release of money supposedly owed. Each story was different. The goal was always the same: extract cash, phones, laptops, and other valuables from people who believed they were helping someone they loved.
Those people, scattered across the United States, lost money to what the FBI describes as a sophisticated international romance-fraud operation linked to “Black Axe,” a Nigerian organised-crime group that ran its scheme from Cape Town. Years later, the men accused of running it are finally heading to face American justice.
Additional reference context is available at https://www.enca.com/news-top-stories-videos/inside-nigerian-romance-scam-network-sa-sending-us.
A group of Nigerian nationals will be extradited to the United States on Friday, handed over to face charges in Texas and New Jersey. They were arrested in 2021, all living in South Africa at the time of the alleged offences.
The FBI previously identified Enorense Izevbigie, also known as “Richy Izevbigie” and “Lord Samuel S Nujoma,” as the alleged leader of the Black Axe group operating in South Africa. He was extradited to the United States in 2024. The men now facing extradition followed a similar legal path, one that took years to resolve.
Their fight against extradition began in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court, where key rulings came down in July 2023 and January 2024. On 19 February 2024, the court determined they could be extradited and ordered them held in custody while the Justice Minister decided whether to surrender them to US authorities. The suspects challenged that decision in the High Court, arguing that the offences named in the US indictment did not correspond precisely with offences under South African law, and that this mismatch should block their transfer.
In April 2026, the Western Cape High Court rejected that reasoning. The court found that the evidence demonstrated a large-scale international fraud scheme. The appeal was dismissed.
The charges they now face include conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, money laundering, and aggravated identity theft. For the victims who sent money and valuables to people they thought cared for them, the extraditions represent a reckoning that has been years in the making. Whether the prosecutions in Texas and New Jersey will bring them any sense of closure remains an open question.