{"id":35345,"date":"2026-07-11T18:34:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T22:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/the-yahoo-boys-shows-nigerias-scammers-are-still-people\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T18:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T22:34:14","slug":"the-yahoo-boys-shows-nigerias-scammers-are-still-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/the-yahoo-boys-shows-nigerias-scammers-are-still-people\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Yahoo Boys’ Shows Nigeria\u2019s Scammers Are Still People"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Carlos Barr\u00e1gan just wanted to understand what had happened to his mother. How could she, an accomplished, professional, middle-class woman who had raised three sons on her own, fall prey to a romance scammer pretending to be a U.S. soldier in Syria who was likely in reality a young man based in Lagos, Nigeria? As first detailed in his 2023 feature <\/a>for the Atavist <\/em>magazine and now expanded into his first book, The Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria\u2019s Romance Scammers<\/em>, Barr\u00e1gan, a journalist in Madrid, thought he was going to find some measure of justice for his mother, and also take a closer look at the male loneliness epidemic.<\/p>\n

What he discovered, through this outstanding work of immersion journalism (written in English, his second language), was a far more complex story at the intersection of a persistent economic crisis; global hungers literal and metaphorical; and the brutal need to survive at all costs. In the United States alone, romance scams<\/a> target nearly one in 10 adults<\/a> aged 50 and over, leading to more than $1.1 billion<\/a> in total losses as of 2023\u2014\u201cthe highest reported losses for any form of imposter scam,\u201d according to the Federal Trade Commission.<\/p>\n

Carlos Barr\u00e1gan just wanted to understand what had happened to his mother. How could she, an accomplished, professional, middle-class woman who had raised three sons on her own, fall prey to a romance scammer pretending to be a U.S. soldier in Syria who was likely in reality a young man based in Lagos, Nigeria? As first detailed in his 2023 feature <\/a>for the Atavist <\/em>magazine and now expanded into his first book, The Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria\u2019s Romance Scammers<\/em>, Barr\u00e1gan, a journalist in Madrid, thought he was going to find some measure of justice for his mother, and also take a closer look at the male loneliness epidemic.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span>
\n The book cover for “The Yahoo Boys” by Carlos Barrag\u00e1n features a yellow background with a large black silhouette of a man looking downward. Inside the lower portion of his silhouette, a smaller, yellow silhouette depicts a woman with her hair in a bun looking at a smartphone. The main title “THE YAHOO BOYS” is written in a large, blocky black font at the top, with the subtitle “LOVE, DECEPTION, AND THE REAL LIVES OF NIGERIA’S ROMANCE SCAMMERS” positioned to the left of the man’s silhouette.<\/p>\n

The Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria\u2019s Romance Scammers<\/em>, Carlos Barr\u00e1gan, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 304 pp., $29, June 2026 <\/p>\n

What he discovered, through this outstanding work of immersion journalism (written in English, his second language), was a far more complex story at the intersection of a persistent economic crisis; global hungers literal and metaphorical; and the brutal need to survive at all costs. In the United States alone, romance scams<\/a> target nearly one in 10 adults<\/a> aged 50 and over, leading to more than $1.1 billion<\/a> in total losses as of 2023\u2014\u201cthe highest reported losses for any form of imposter scam,\u201d according to the Federal Trade Commission.<\/p>\n

Barr\u00e1gan makes what could be considered a controversial choice: to spend his time with four romance scammers, the titular Yahoo Boys (named for the email service that scammers largely used in the 2000s) living and surviving in Ikotun. Ikotun is part of Lagos\u2019s mainland, far poorer than the island, where the obscenely rich live alongside expats. Doing so centers perpetrators over victims, but Barr\u00e1gan\u2019s reasoning turns out to be sound, because the motivations and desires of the scammers hinge on a desperation similar to that of their victims. The outcomes may be different, but the loneliness and need are the same.<\/p>\n

Scam victims see outreach on social media, dating apps, or text messages as a genuine overture, one that makes them feel seen in a world where true emotional bonds are increasingly replaced with ersatz online strands. That isolation and lack of community makes it easy for them to fall for online illusions, even implausible ones. Even a line as banal as, \u201cHow was your day, babe?\u201d goes a long way: \u201cIf you give them attention, you have their heart. If you have their heart, you have their money,\u201d one scammer tells Barr\u00e1gan. Gender also wasn\u2019t a big deal: Many of the scammers Barr\u00e1gan talked to were as likely to scam men as they did women.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span>
\n A hand holds a smartphone displaying a text message conversation with a contact named “Ancel.” The chat includes a sent photograph of a smiling woman posing next to a bouquet of red roses, accompanied by an affectionate paragraph of text. Below it, subsequent chat bubbles show a brief exchange of text messages and a message containing three kiss emojis.<\/p>\n

A message and photo that Shreya Datta, a tech professional who was a victim of an online scam known as \u201cpig butchering,\u201d shared with a person who turned out to be a scammer is displayed on her phone in Philadelphia on Feb. 9, 2024.Bastien Inzaurralde\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n

The scammers, in their teens and 20s, grew up in a country going through a continual cycle of boom and bust, fueled by oil money and hyperinflation. Nigerians have few options for a real future: Make the equivalent of pennies on the dollar doing honest work, or hundreds (or more) U.S. dollars in one fell swoop from working off well-worn scripts to charm lonely Westerners out of their hard-earned money. \u201cInflation is crazy. Prices are skyrocketing. The only thing in Nigeria young people can do to survive is joining Yahoo. No office work can give you the kind of money that Yahoo will give you,\u201d one scammer told Barr\u00e1gan.<\/p>\n

If that account sounds somewhat self-serving, you\u2019d be right. Each of the romance scammers Barr\u00e1gan profiles operates in a world of moral discoloration, a spectrum of darker gray where redemption is a faraway joke. Biggy, naming himself after the murdered rapper Biggie Smalls, seems the most self-aware, but he can\u2019t quite reconcile his ability to feel empathy for his victims with the survival itch he must always scratch as the money he scams slips through his fingers yet again, largely spent on drugs, booze, and other markers of the high life.<\/p>\n

Chibuike, in dirty clothes and with drowned hopes, seems to spin unbelievable yarns, but Barr\u00e1gan corroborates his distended horror story of scamming an Irish woman, \u201cTheresa\u201d (all the victims\u2019 names are pseudonyms) for years by pretending to be the WWE wrestler Cody Rhodes, only to lose it all through drugs, profligate spending, and getting fleeced by his girlfriend.<\/p>\n

Cautionary tales abound, none more than Azeez, a teenage boy with two paths available to him\u2014either the moral, churchgoing approach of his beloved grandmother or the instant cash flaunted by his Yahoo Boy pals\u2014that fork into the same barren cul-de-sac. Finally, there is Richie, alternately feeling deep remorse and utter disdain towards Trisha, the U.S. woman he roped into laundering money for him from a variety of scams. He ruined her life, and now she\u2019s dead (with pictorial proof to boot) but as Barr\u00e1gan demonstrates in a bravura journey to Kentucky, Trisha\u2019s home state, <\/strong>to figure out the truth, even the scammed have some desperate tricks up their sleeve.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span>
\n An over-the-shoulder view shows a person’s hands counting a large stack of paper currency. In the foreground, another small bundle of cash, a set of keys, and bowls of food rest on a dark wooden table. In the background, out of focus, another person wearing a patterned shirt sits on a wooden bench with their hands on their hips.<\/p>\n

A man counts Nigerian naira as a customer exchanges money in Ikoyi island in Lagos on Sept. 16, 2024.Olympia de Maismont\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n

Barr\u00e1gan generally keeps the focus tight on his chosen four subjects, presenting them as fully fledged (if still extremely immature) human beings vacillating between different degrees of desperation, which is never fully slaked even after the influx of riches from a successful romance scam. But he also zooms out to the larger economic and historical picture, reminding readers that such scams have proliferated, albeit in different and less technologically adroit forms, since the beginning of the 20th century, as oppressed Nigerians figured out how to extract money from their colonial oppressors.<\/p>\n

He also points out the difference between Nigerian-based scams, which operate in a more decentralized manner (often through peer pressure) than the more organized networks operating out of Southeast Asia. Scamlands<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Snigdha Poonam\u2019s recently published (and excellent) investigation into the various scams that have become so pervasive in eastern India, Cambodia, and throughout the globe, points out that \u201cfraud is no longer furtive\u2026it has become the foundation of entire economies, breaking moral compasses but also blurring boundaries.\u201d Scamming hasn\u2019t just upended the social order, it has become<\/em> the social order, reshaping power dynamics, warping expectations, and accelerating the boom-bust cycles that were already heading off a sharp cliff.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span>
\n An office room filled with people seated at desks with computer monitors, several of whom have hooded sweatshirts pulled over their heads or fabric covering their faces. In the foreground, a person with reddish hair wearing a grey hoodie sits with their head down and hands covering their face. Several men in uniforms stand in the background monitoring the room.<\/p>\n

Workers sit at their desks during a raid by agents of the Presidential Anti-Organised Crime Commission and the National Bureau of Investigation at an office of a suspected online scam farm in Manila, Philippines, on Jan. 31, 2025.Jam Sta Rosa\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span> <\/p>\n

In a sign of how fast things move in the world of scams, The Yahoo Boys<\/em> reads like a recent-history chronicle, because the romance scammers Barr\u00e1gan chronicles in such painstaking detail are about to face a new existential crisis: generative AI. \u201cRomantic AI chatbots run on the same emotional logic as Yahoo Boys,\u201d Barr\u00e1gan writes. \u201cBoth listen, flatter, and mirror desire, building the illusion of the \u2018perfect other,\u2019 while making the lonely feel seen. And in return, both ask for money (or at least training data). But a chatbot doesn\u2019t sleep. It never forgets its backstory, never mixes up its lies, and can manage a hundred simultaneous love affairs without slipping. Unlike a Yahoo Boy, it doesn\u2019t need to invent wild excuses about a missed flight to Atlanta. Because a chatbot doesn\u2019t pretend to be real. It is just a fake relationship without the betrayal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fake relationships seem to be the grim future, with dating app CEOs like Whitney Wolfe Herd excitedly predicting<\/a> that people using their products will use AI personas before human contact begins. Articles about people falling<\/a> in love with chatbots and dying of preventable conditions (including suicide)\u2014 or even committing murder<\/a>\u2014after extensive chatbot use, keep proliferating. What\u2019s a romance scammer to do when they, too, might be training the tool that replaces them? The answer, at least for some scammers in Southeast Asia, is to go all in, using AI as their English interlocutor with would-be victims.<\/p>\n

The Yahoo Boys<\/em> makes clear that there are no winners in this global sucker\u2019s game. Those in Western countries who are scammed for years sometimes lose astronomical sums of money and end up with ruined lives. But the scammers\u2019 lives are also ruined\u2014by persistent societal corruption, inequality, malnutrition, and the lack of real opportunities to better themselves other than the quick lure of temporary enrichment often followed by a swifter descent into drugs, poverty, and additional instability. The reality is that the outcome was rigged long before the players were ever born, and will stay rigged long after they die.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carlos Barr\u00e1gan just wanted to understand what had happened to his mother. How could she, an accomplished, professional, middle-class woman who had raised three sons on her own, fall prey to a romance scammer pretending to be a U.S. soldier in Syria who was likely in reality a young man based in Lagos, Nigeria? 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