The Real Lives of Online Romance Scammers

Carlos Barragán’s reporting on young men in Nigeria who defrauded women over the internet illuminates a grim world of poverty and loneliness.

By the time Chibuike was 24 years old, he had been kicked out of his family home multiple times, developed a drug addiction, attempted suicide, and scammed tens of thousands of dollars from unsuspecting victims overseas. For most of his career as a cybercriminal, Chibuike lived in one hotel after another in his native Ikotun—a bustling, impoverished neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria. He spent lavishly on nights out, knockoff designer wares, and an ever-expanding circle of friends. At night, buoyed by meth and crack, he logged hours on his phone, talking to women who thought they were talking to the American wrestler Cody Rhodes.

Chibuike is a “Yahoo Boy,” a moniker for online fraudsters based in West Africa, especially Nigeria, who con foreigners out of their life savings. Named for the Yahoo email addresses they once used, they build intimate, often romantic relationships with their victims based on fake personas. With enough time and ingenuity, they extract money from “clients” in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in the English-speaking world where digital manipulation, sextortion, or fake cryptocurrency investment opportunities can lure lucrative targets.

Chibuike is one of four young men at the center of Carlos Barragán’s riveting new book, The Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria’s Romance Scammers. Barragán, a reporter at The New York Times, was drawn into the subject when his own mother fell prey to a Nigerian scammer masquerading as a U.S. soldier. What began as a quest for her scammer became a more searching look into the real lives of Yahoo Boys, and how their crimes and aspirations offered a grim reflection of a modern world riddled with poverty, inequality, and transoceanic loneliness.

The “Nigerian prince” email is one of the best known online frauds: A deposed royal asks his unwitting recipients for help with a frozen bank account, promising a generous cut of his estate in exchange for a small advance payment. The fortune is, of course, nonexistent. The beguiling prince makes off with his ill-gotten gains, and the victim is left brooding over their depleted bank account and their naiveté.

Though “Nigerian prince” emails exploded in step with the expansion of the internet in the 2000s, versions of the scheme were prevalent long before the digital age, operating via the postal service and fax machines. 419 scams—named after Section 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code—have their roots in the colonial and early postcolonial periods, which created ideal conditions for legally questionable get-rich-quick schemes. As the historian Stephen Ellis has observed, the British practice of colonial governance through indigenous elites, known as indirect rule, incentivized charlatanry and corruption among local officials with unchecked power. One commissioner in southeastern Nigeria deceived locals into thinking he possessed supernatural powers, while another officer used a glass eye to create the impression that he was always........

© New Republic