On Wednesday, Meta declared that it had removed over 63,000 Nigerian Facebook profiles that were trying to carry out money extortion schemes against American adult men.
Citing Reuters, in a statement, Facebook’s parent corporation revealed that among the deleted accounts was a smaller, coordinated network of about 2,500 accounts connected to a group of about 20 people.
According to Meta: “They targeted primarily adult men in the U.S. and used fake accounts to mask their identities.”
Nigerian internet scammers, dubbed “Yahoo Boys,” are well-known for their deceptive practices. They may pose as those in need of money, present themselves as Nigerian princes promising a spectacular return on investment, or even pose as foreigners looking for true love.
BrandSpur technology and information news reports that in sexual extortion, sometimes known as “sextortion,” victims are threatened with the publication of incriminating images, which may be real or staged unless they pay to end the abuse.
After conducting an investigation, Meta reported the fraudsters’ activities to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States. The investigation revealed that most of the scammers’ attempts were unsuccessful, and while they largely targeted adults, there were also attempts made against kids.
The company claimed to have employed a mix of recently created technology indicators specifically designed to detect sex extortion.
Since the national penal code’s section on fraud dealt with it ineffectively, Nigerian fraudsters have been referred to as “419 scams.” But as things get harder economically in this more populous nation of almost 200 million people, online frauds have proliferated, and their operators are now mostly based in wealthy areas, slum suburbs, or university dorms.
According to Meta, some identities were offering advice on how to pull off scams: “Their efforts included offering to sell scripts and guides to use when scamming people, and sharing links to collections of photos to use when populating fake accounts.”
