EFCC Set to Go after “Yahoo Boys” as Meta Deletes over 63,000 Facebook, Instagram, Other Accounts
- The Economic and Financial Crimes Commissions said it is ready to support the effort to combat internet extortion scams
- This came after hundreds of fraudulent Nigerian Instagram and Facebook accounts were removed by Meta
- The social media giant removed almost 63,000 fake accounts last summer because they were linked to the growing "sextortion" issue
Legit.ng journalist Zainab Iwayemi has over 3-year-experience covering the Economy, Technology, and Capital Market.
Following Meta's takedown of hundreds of phony Nigerian Instagram and Facebook accounts, which raised awareness of the need to protect young people online, Nigeria is eager to assist in the fight against online extortion scams.
Source: Getty Images
The nation's anti-corruption body, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, told the Financial Times that it was prepared to cooperate with international law enforcement in order to apprehend offenders who were located in Nigeria.
The commission spokesperson Dele Oyewale said last week, “There’s no safe haven for anyone committing such crimes in Nigeria as far as the EFCC is concerned.”
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Spread of sextortion
Over 63,000 fraudulent identities were deleted by the social media behemoth last summer due to their involvement in the escalating "sextortion". Among them was a "co-ordinated network" consisting of 2,500 profiles connected to 20 different people.
Authorities, especially in the US, are concerned about the spread of sextortion, which in the worst cases has led some victims to commit su*cide. Meanwhile, social media companies are faced with a dilemma over the best way to protect their most susceptible consumers.
“Financial sextortion is a rising and very serious threat targeting our minors nationwide,” Cheyvoryea Gibson, special agent in charge of the FBI in the US state of Michigan, where one of the most extreme cases of sextortion took place, said in a statement in April.
The offenders contact their potential victims, who are mostly boys and young men, by pretending to be young women on false accounts.
Online chats frequently grow flirtatious very fast as scammers ask their victims for sexually explicit photos, try to extract money by threatening to share the photos with their families, and then threaten to reveal the photos.
The FBI claims that the con artists investigate their victims' residences and places of employment using search engines like Google and other internet resources.
Thousands of Facebook sites, groups, and accounts that were offering advice to scammers have also been removed by Meta. The accounts' creators, known as "Yahoo Boys," are a loosely organized group of youthful, primarily male computer scammers who have been active in Nigeria for many years.
The tech group claimed to have discovered more Ivory Coast-based accounts engaged in sextortion. The FBI claims that criminals are also active in southeast Asian nations including the Philippines.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security received over 13,000 reports of sextortion between October 2021 and March 2023. At least 12,600 people were involved in these schemes, the most of them were boys. The FBI states that "males between the ages of 14 and 17 are typically the victims."
‘Yahoo boys’ remove over N6bn from account
Legit.ng reported that Hope Payment Service Bank had reportedly recorded a significant breach, with N6.5 billion fraudulently obtained from its banking platform in a cyber attack.
The funds were reportedly transferred to hundreds of accounts in commercial banks and neobanks. Hope PSB had already begun a legal process to recover the stolen funds from unknown persons.
Proofread by Kola Muhammed, journalist and copyeditor at Legit.ng
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