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In a bid to evade strategies deployed by law enforcement agencies to end their illegal activities, fraudsters, commonly known as ‘Yahoo boys’, who primarily exploit digital cyberspace to defraud unsuspecting members of the public of their hard-earned money, now resort to various shady means, including seeking spiritual protection to hide their identities, Victor Ayeni writes.
The EFCC officials, acting on a tip-off about some suspected fraudsters residing in an estate in the Lugbe area, invaded their compound and in the process, caused a commotion that woke the 26-year-old, making his heart pound rapidly.Confused and disoriented, Marcel peeked through his curtains, saw an EFCC van parked outside and heard the law enforcement officials moving into his neighbour’s apartment.With a sense of urgency, the Imo State indigene picked up the phone he had been using for over two years to scam unsuspecting people and rushed to the restroom.
My hands were shaking but my brain was working like a clock. An idea came into my head to wrap my phone in a nylon bag and that’s what I quickly did. A voice in my mind told me to hide the phone in the toilet tank, but another voice told me they would find it and I would be busted.“I decided to dip the phone in the toilet bowl and shove it in the connecting pipe. That phone is what I used for ‘bombing and grinding’ and if EFCC finds it, I’m done,” Marcel confessed to Saturday.
In Nigeria, Internet fraudsters, aka Yahoo boys or G-boys, are known to make a living by defrauding people online and offline.Two of the slogans used by members of this criminal network are “bombing” which means finding a victim online and “grinding” which refers to chatting with a victim. These victims are often called “clients” or “magas.”Before Marcel could fully comprehend what was happening to his neighbour – whom he claimed to be a G-boy – the door to his room was flung open with a force that sent it slamming against the wall.
Several EFCC officers stormed in, their flashlights sliced through the darkness that permeated Marcel’s room. One of the officers stepped forward, and with a stern expression, he said, “We are EFCC, stay where you are.”As the young man sat there, frozen in a mixture of fear and bewilderment, the officers began their meticulous search. They rifled through his drawers, upended his mattress, and scattered his belongings across the floor.
Show me your phone,” one of the officers shouted, his tone brooking no argument. Marcel told our correspondent that he denied having a phone as he had recently lost it.He said, “I don’t think they believed my lie. One of them quickly pointed at my charger which was still plugged into an electric socket and told me ‘Is that not the charger to your phone? What are you charging with it?’.
As I tried to lie, I felt a slap across my face which made me see stars and planets. I started to cry, begging them that I was not a Yahoo boy and that I was just a shoemaker. I showed them the set of sandals I recently made, and they took it and flung it to a corner of the room. It was then I knew it was over for me.
They started to rummage through my room, searched my drawers, and threw down all the boxes on top of my wardrobe. My room looked like a tornado had swept through it. Then one of them went into the restroom. From where I was seated, I could see him looking through the toilet tank and checking the toilet bowl but didn’t see my phone. Eventually, they all left my room.”
After an hour, when the EFCC enforcement officers had left, Marcel borrowed a phone from one of his neighbours and called his mother, Bridget, who resided in Lagos.Bridget, a fervent member of a popular Pentecostal church is aware of her son’s involvement in Internet fraud. She had been functioning as a spiritual adviser who prayed for Marcel’s protection from the authorities.
Marcel added, “My mother was almost weeping on the phone. She thought I had been arrested because she had a dream earlier that month that EFCC arrested me and she warned me. She prays for me and I believe so much in her prayers. I believe it was what saved me from being arrested on that day.“Most of the G-guys living in our flat and estate were arrested, they even arrested some innocent people. One teenage boy who came to stay temporarily with his aunt was one of those arrested. I’m very sure that if they had seen my phone, I would have been caught because it is my hustle pack.”
Nigerian princes’In the early 2000s, a phrase known as ‘Yahoo boys’ was coined to describe young, financially driven persons who utilised Yahoo.com’s email accounts to execute phishing scams, also known as ‘Yahoo Yahoo’ or ‘419 fraud’ in the Nigerian slogan.According to Infosecurity Magazine, Internet fraudsters are the original ‘Nigerian Princes,’ who have shifted in recent years to conduct elderly fraud, fake job scams, and romance scams.
The accounts, deleted over the past few weeks, were used for financial sextortion scams and distribution of blackmail scripts.Meta reported that a smaller network of 2,500 accounts, linked to around 20 individuals, primarily targeted adult men in the United States using fake identities.Findings by Saturday PUNCH showed that Nigerian Internet fraudsters operate in different ways ranging from fake job scams to business email compromise and transnational fraudulent schemes.
A notable example is 40-year-old Ramon Abbas, also known by his Instagram handle, Ray Hushpuppi, who was sentenced to 135 months in United States federal prison sometime in November 2022.A prolific international fraudster, Abbas laundered tens of millions of dollars through a series of online scams and flaunted his luxurious, crime-funded lifestyle on social media till his arrest in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in June 2020
Tainted luxury lifeIn Nigeria, G-boys are often known to flaunt their luxurious, crime-funded lifestyles on social media. They often show off their luxury cars, posh houses, sultry mistresses, and dainty feasts in expensive hotels, clubs, or resorts.They are mostly bejewelled from head to toe, adorned in designer clothes, and spend money lavishly with their friends – an activity that is called “balling” within their circles.
Other slang used by Internet fraudsters include ‘gbenusi,’ a Yoruba word that is used to connote celebrating or throwing a big party after a successful deal, ‘sana wole’ which means beginning a party with fireworks, and ‘picker,’ a code-word for someone who helps in opening foreign bank accounts and receive money, then helps them forward such money to Nigeria.
EFCC incessant raidsEarlier this month, the EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, disclosed that several international companies had shut down their Nigerian operations following massive theft of their finances through local wire fraud.According to a statement by the commission’s Head of Media and Publicity, Dele Oyewale, the EFCC chairman noted that in 2022, over $500m was lost due to the activities of Internet fraudsters.
He said, “The alarming statistics continued with Nigerian banks losing over N8bn to electronic transfer fraud in the first nine months of 2022.”Acting based on intelligence reports of Yahoo boys who lodge in hotels and lavish money at nightclubs, EFCC operatives have been raiding hotels to arrest cybercrime suspects.
In June, EFCC officers, in the early hours of Saturday, raided two hotels and event centres located in the Alagbaka area of Akure, the Ondo State capital, and arrested over 50 suspects including a soon-to-be groom who was celebrating his bachelor’s eve at one of the targeted clubs.The anti-corruption agency also allegedly seized numerous vehicles, laptops, high-end smart phones, and other items during the operation.
On March 11, operatives of the Lagos Zonal Command of EFCC also arrested 45 suspected Internet fraudsters in the Ikorodu area of Lagos, following an intelligence report on the activities of an organised cybercrime syndicate network, operating in that axis of the state.Items recovered from them at the point of arrest included exotic vehicles, sophisticated mobile devices, and laptops.
Similarly, in February this year, EFCC operatives arrested 36 suspected Internet fraudsters in the Gbokoniyin and Yetedo areas of Abeokuta, Ogun State.In the same month, officials of the anti-graft agency also arrested 14 suspected fraudsters at a ‘Yahoo Academy’ (believed to be a training centre for soon-to-be Internet fraudsters) in Makurdi, Benue State.
Similarly, in July 2021, about 30 suspects were also arrested by EFCC operatives during a raid on the Parktonian Hotel in the Lekki area of Lagos State.Concealing identitiesHowever, to hide from the eagle eyes of the anti-cybercrime institution, our correspondent gathered that many suspected Yahoo boys have resorted to adopting different tactics to conceal their illegal professional identities.
Some tactics include modifying their public appearances and living a modest lifestyle, a strategy at variance with the stereotypical ways of affluence funded with the proceeds from their fraudulent activities.When our correspondent reached out to several suspected G-boys, all except a few vehemently declined to speak about their involvement for fear of being hunted down by the EFCC.
Deceitful tacticsDuring a conversation with a suspected fraudster, identified simply as Olalekan at an eatery in Ibadan, Oyo State, this reporter observed that he looked nothing like the stereotypical image of a Yahoo boy.The graduate of a public university in Kwara State, who was dressed in a grey flowing robe known as Jalabiya, sported a punk hairstyle and a full-grown beard, while a silver wristwatch adorned his wrist.
A string of prayer beads hung awkwardly from Olalekan’s pocket, and he clutched an Android phone.“I have to be careful now,” he told our correspondent as he munched on his food. “I was arrested four years ago whilst still in school. I was in my finals but had joined the G-boys because the peer pressure was too much. EFCC officials raided our off-campus hostels one early morning and I was among the G-boys they arrested.
They seized all our cars, gadgets, and phones and packed all of us to their station. It wasn’t easy there at all. They looked into all of our phones and e-wallets to see something incriminating to link us with cybercrimes.
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