- Meta has announced the removal of approximately 63,000 Facebook accounts based in Nigeria involved in financial sextortion scams.
- These scams entail impersonating others, typically attractive women, to dupe victims into sending nude photographs. Subsequently, scammers threaten to publicly release these images unless a ransom is paid.
- The tech giant also eliminated approximately 7,200 resources, consisting of 1,300 Facebook accounts, 200 Facebook Pages, and 5,700 Facebook Groups from Nigeria.
These pages and groups facilitated such scams by offering guidance, including scripted dialogues for engaging with victims and providing links to collections of images used by scammers to create fake identities for catfishing.
The Facebook parent company also disclosed the removal of accounts, including approximately 2,500 linked to a coordinated network operated by about 20 individuals.
Meta reported that its investigation revealed most financial sextortion attempts by scammers targeting adult men in the United States were unsuccessful. Yet, the company noted instances where minors were targeted, which Meta promptly reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The tech giant reported that financial sextortion, akin to many crimes, extends beyond national boundaries. In recent years, there has been a discernible rise in scammers targeting individuals globally via the Internet. These efforts are primarily led by cybercriminals referred to as Yahoo Boys — Nigerian online fraudsters — who perpetrate a range of scams, including financial sextortion.
“We’ve banned Yahoo Boys under Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy — one of our strictest policies — which means we remove Yahoo Boys’ accounts engaged in this criminal activity whenever we become aware of them,” the company says.
What’s more, sextortion often begins with romance scams, with reports underscoring Nigeria's significant role in online romance fraud across Africa. Unfortunately, scammers are also increasingly targeting mobile games for exploitation.
Meanwhile, Meta is currently testing advanced technology aimed at preventing victims from falling prey to sextortion scams. This includes a new auto-blur feature in Instagram direct messages (DMs), designed to automatically blur images if nudity is detected, the company announced.
