Meta Platforms announced on Wednesday that it had removed approximately 63,000 Facebook accounts in Nigeria involved in financial sexual extortion scams, primarily targeting adult men in the United States.
These accounts were linked to notorious Nigerian online fraudsters known as “Yahoo boys,” who are infamous for various scams, including pretending to be individuals in financial distress or Nigerian princes promising high investment returns.
Meta revealed that the removed accounts included a smaller, coordinated network of about 2,500 linked to roughly 20 individuals. The scammers used fake profiles to conceal their identities and targeted mainly adult men in the U.S., employing sexual extortion tactics, or “sextortion,” where victims are threatened with the release of compromising photos unless they pay to prevent it.
The investigation found that most of the scammers’ attempts were unsuccessful, although some attempts were made against minors, which Meta reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the U.S.
Meta’s efforts to combat these scams included new technical signals designed to identify sextortion. The Nigerian fraudsters, known for “419 scams” due to a section of the penal code addressing fraud, have adapted their methods as economic conditions worsen in the country. Scammers now operate from various settings, including university dormitories, shanty towns, and affluent neighborhoods.
Some removed accounts were found to be distributing tips on conducting scams, selling scripts and guides, and sharing links to collections of photos for use in fake accounts.
