Meta Platforms has announced that it took down around 63,000 Facebook accounts in Nigeria that were engaged in financial sextortion scams.
The fraudulent activities were primarily aimed at adult men in the United States.
In a statement on Wednesday, Meta disclosed that among the removed accounts was a smaller coordinated network of about 2,500 accounts, linked to a group of roughly 20 individuals.
“They targeted primarily adult men in the U.S. and used fake accounts to mask their identities,” Meta stated.
The individuals behind these scams, commonly known in Nigeria as “Yahoo boys,” are infamous for engaging in various forms of online fraud, including pretending to be people in financial distress or posing as Nigerian princes offering lucrative investment opportunities.
The sextortion scheme involves threatening individuals with the release of compromising photos, either real or fabricated, unless a payment is made to prevent the images’ release.
While most of the scammers’ attempts were unsuccessful, Meta reported that there were also efforts targeting minors.
These incidents were reported to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the U.S.
Meta utilised new technical measures to detect and dismantle these sextortion networks.
The scammers, known for operating under the label of “419 scams” (named after the Nigerian penal code section related to fraud), have been increasing their activities as economic conditions worsen in Nigeria, a country with over 200 million people.
These scams often originate in diverse settings, including university dormitories, shantytowns, and affluent neighbourhoods.
In addition to the sextortion activities, some of the dismantled accounts were found to be sharing tips and resources for conducting 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,” Meta revealed.
