Due to ‘sextortion’ schemes, Facebook deletes 63,000 accounts in Nigeria

The removal of over 63,000 Facebook profiles in Nigeria that attempted to participate in financial sexual extortion scams, mostly targeting adult men in the United States, was announced on Wednesday by Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab.

The term “Yahoo boys” refers to a group of Nigerian internet scammers who go by various identities, such as posing as needy individuals or promising exceptional returns on investments.

A smaller coordinated network of about 2,500 accounts that were connected to a group of about 20 people was also among the deleted accounts, according to a statement from Meta.

“They targeted primarily adult men in the U.S. and used fake accounts to mask their identities,” Meta stated.

In sexual extortion, often known as “sextortion,” victims are threatened with the publication of incriminating images, which may be real or staged, if they do not pay to end the practice.

After conducting an investigation, Meta reported the fraudsters’ activities to the National Center 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 against kids.

The business claimed to have employed a mix of recently created technology indicators specifically designed to detect sex extortion.

Nigerian con artists gained notoriety as “419 scams” in response to the ineffectual component of the country’s penal law that addressed fraud.

Online frauds have become more prevalent as the more than 200 million people in the nation experience increasing economic challenges. The perpetrators of these scams typically operate out of wealthy neighborhoods, shanty 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,” according to the report.