It is a sinister organised crime group whose bloodthirsty henchmen routinely engage in drug smuggling, human trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, rape and murder.
Bizarrely, the ultra violent Black Axe gang, whose secret rituals have seen it compared with a cult, started out as a university fraternity in Nigeria in the 1970s and where new members are forcibly recruited, while many volunteer.
Recruits, often male university undergraduates aged between 16 and 23, undergo a secret initiation ceremony that involves physical and psychological trauma including being stripped naked, tortured and having to take part in a blood drinking ritual, after which they are ‘reborn’ as an ‘Aye Axeman’.
Now the mafia-style organisation’s sophisticated international cybercrime network has turned it into a global threat – and shattered the lives of thousands of Britons who have been fleeced of their life savings.
The enterprise has an estimated 30,000 members operating in cells in dozens of countries around the world.
According to Pentagon analysts in the US, victims are conned out of in excess of $5billion (£3.8billion) every year through a range of elaborate online stings including romance and inheritance scams along with ransomware and phishing attacks.