By Our Reporter
So far, the tech giant Meta has removed 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria linked to financial sextortion scams, including a coordinated network of around 2,500 accounts tied to a group of about 20 individuals.
Meta, owners of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, in a major move, carried out a surprising severance by deleting several hundreds of accounts belonging to ‘Yahoo Boys,’ otherwise known as fraudsters for engaging in financial crimes of different shades.
In a report entitled, ‘Combating Financial Sextortion Scams From Nigeria,’ the company removed accounts, including a coordinated network of about 2,500 accounts, belonging to Nigerians.
Meta classified their conducts as financial sextortion and described same as a horrific crime that can have devastating consequences.
The tech giant emphasized that it removed a set of Facebook accounts, pages, and groups run by ‘Yahoo Boys’ under its ‘Dangerous Organisations and Individuals policy.’
Yahoo boys are online fraudsters whose moniker originated from the email service, Yahoo, which became popular in Nigeria in the 2000s. These scammers are the successors of 419 fraudsters, who used to promise and pretend to help unsuspecting victims get rich through letters and later emails for an advance fee.
A Bloomberg Businessweek exposé published in April underscored the high rate of financial sextortion in the US, tracing many scams to Nigeria.
Meta explained that financial sextortion is a borderless crime, increasingly driven by the activities of Yahoo Boys, whom it described as loosely organised cybercriminals operating primarily out of Nigeria and specialising in various scams.
So far, the tech giant Meta has removed 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria linked to financial sextortion scams, including a coordinated network of around 2,500 accounts tied to a group of about 20 individuals.
The prolific fraudsters primarily targeted male adults in the US, using fake accounts to conceal their identities. Meta used a combination of new technical signals and in-depth investigations by its expert teams to identify and remove these accounts.
Meta said: “The majority of these accounts had already been detected and disabled by our enforcement systems, and this investigation allowed us to remove the remaining accounts and understand more about the techniques being used to improve our automated detection.”
It noted that most of the scammers’ attempts were unsuccessful and primarily targeted adults, though they also attempted to target minors, adding that the concerned accounts had been reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
The tech giant stated that, “While these investigations and disruptions are critical, they’re just one part of our approach. We continue to support law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting these crimes, including by responding to valid legal requests for information and by alerting them when we become aware of someone at risk of imminent harm, in accordance with our terms of service and applicable law.”
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