Meta Platforms had on Wednesday announced that it had removed about 63,000 Facebook accounts registered in Nigeria over attempts to engage in financial sexual extortion scams targeted at adult men in the United States.
Meta had also revealed that the removed accounts included a smaller coordinated network of around 2,500 that were associated to a group of around 20 individuals.
Nigerian online fraudsters, a.k.a “Yahoo boys”, are infamous for their scams that range from passing themselves off as people in financial need or Nigerian princes who offer an outstanding return on an investment.
In sexual extortion, or “sextortion”, people are threatened with the release of compromising images if they do not pay to stop them.
Further investigations found that most of the scammers’ attempts were unsuccessful and although the targets were mostly against adults, there were also attempts against minors, which Meta has reported to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the U.S.
The company said it had used a combination of new technical signals to help identify sex extortion.
As economic hardships worsen in the country populated with over 200 million people, online scams have increased, with those behind them operating from university dormitories, shanty suburbs or affluent neighbourhoods.
Meta had also revealed how some accounts were providing tips for conducting scams.
What They’re Saying
“They targeted primarily adult men in the U.S. and used fake accounts to mask their identities,” Meta had said.
“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,” it said.
