Cybercriminals known as the Yahoo Boys, who are based in Nigeria, prey on victims in the United States, Australia, Canada, Europe and other parts of the world.Mostly young, unemployed men, they use romance scams to defraud their victims.
This crime group is now using AI in its romance scams.They create fake online profiles and use them to target victims.After winning the victims’ trust, the scammers would use a false pretense.
For these activities, the crime group use dating websites and social media.The majority of Nigeria’s yahoo boys are relatively young people.These cybercriminals start dating white, wealthy, single women. When they gain the trust of elderly white women, they begins to use false pretences to extort money.
Using Yahoo! email accounts, Nigeria’s Yahoo Boys have deceived millions of victims with advance-fee “419” scams. The section of Nigeria’s Criminal Code that addresses fraud and the related charges and penalties is known as the “419.”
They also involved in financial extortion. In order to gain trust, these scammers frequently pretend to be possible love interests.They then threaten to reveal private and confidential images or information.
In certain sextortion cases, fake images or videos generated by using deepfakes.In romance scams,they also completely alter their look in real time by using face-swapping technology to impress victims in video chat.
