Financial sextortion is now the most rapidly growing crime targeting American, Canadian, and Australian youth. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has called it: “a global crisis that demands everyone’s attention” – having observed a one thousand percent increase in financial sextortion incidents over the last 18 months.
In a December 2023 hearing, FBI Director Wray warned Congress that sextortion is “a rapidly escalating threat,” and teenage victims “don’t know where to turn.”
Almost all this activity is linked to West African cybercriminals known as the “Yahoo Boys”, who primarily target English-speaking minors and young adults on the online social networks: Instagram, Snapchat, and Wizz, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) report, “A Digital Pandemic: Uncovering the role of ‘Yahoo Boys’ in the Surge of Social Media-enabled Financial Sextortion Targeting Minors.
The last few years have seen an explosion in youth sextortion across the English-speaking world. The National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) also reported a 7,200 percent increase in financial sextortion incidents targeting children during the period 2021 to 2022.8.
‘Yahoo Boys’ sextortion led to 21 youth suicides
Cybercriminals, primarily the West African ‘Yahoo Boys’, use fake social media accounts to coerce victims, mainly boys, into sharing explicit photos. As soon as the criminal receives the photo, they threaten to – and sometimes do – expose the photo to the victim’s friends, family, and online followers unless a ransom is paid.
According to the NCRI report: “These criminals employ ruthless tactics to intimidate their victims, inflicting lasting trauma and immense distress–which has led to over 21 youth suicides.”
The report quotes the case of Olamide Oladosu Shanu, a Nigerian national who was indicted along with four co-conspirators in November 2023 for financial sextortion. The indictment alleges that Shanu’s criminal enterprise received upwards of $2.5 million U.S. dollars in Bitcoin from victims’ payments.
Sextortion criminals are ‘bombing’ high schools
“The sextortion criminals are “bombing” high schools, youth sports teams, and universities with fake accounts, using advanced social engineering tactics to coerce their victims into a compromising situation,” says the report.
According to the NCRI, the Yahoo Boy subculture has become a part of the Nigerian internet landscape., which is often associated with flaunting wealth and displaying expensive items like cars, designer clothes, and jewelry on social media to showcase their successes.
The report stresses that, even if the sextortion victim pays up, the photos are rarely deleted and the criminals continue to demand multiple payments over an extended period. The prevailing guidance from law enforcement is for victims to block the criminal immediately and refuse to pay.
The NCRI report recommends that Instagram should give users the option to set their Followers and Following lists to Private, and set all minors’ Followers and Following lists to private by default. It also suggests that Instagram and Wizz should improve the in-app reporting process to quickly and effectively ban sextortion accounts and that TikTok, YouTube, and Scribd should also take down the sextortion how-to guides, materials, and scripts that they are currently hosting.
