With their array of computer skills and fertile imagination that spin copious cash for them and anguish for victims, the Yahoo Boys-a new class of young Nigerian fraudsters-dislodge traditional 419ners their outdated repertoire of tricks.
Unlike the more familiar Advance Fee Fraud largely run by middle-aged Nigerians, Yahoo schemes do not depend on e-mails offering stupendous cash rewards to those willing to assist presumably distressed persons in moving money trapped in local and overseas accounts. Rather, they are operated by youths (aged between 18 and 25) and with vast computer skills.
On the streets, they are known as Yahoo Boys or millionaires, an allusion to their dependence on the Internet and their money-generating ideas. The millionaires tag is not misplaced. For the Yahoo Boys, crime pays handsomely and in hard currency, too.
The successful Yahoo Boy lives a life of immodest opulence: snazzy dresses, expensive mobile phones, posh cars and sumptuous apartments – bought or rented. The cybercafé is his shrine. His preferred haunts are drinking joints, where he advertises his new status and hangs out with successful and yet-to-be successful colleagues. The joints also provide opportunities to learn new tricks and plan new heists.
Information reaching ZN revealed that Yahoo Boys’ preferred mode of operation is the exploitation of loopholes in e-commerce. Known as ‘Ready-To-Buy’ in street parlance, it entails participation in genuine online auctions mostly involving U.S and Canadian firms. During the auctions, scammers put in the highest bids for winning. The payment, which arrives as a cashier’s cheque, is regarded as good as cash in the U.S.
The most sought after goods are mobile phones, laptop computers, computer parts, car spare parts, cameras, perfumes, clothes, among others. When received, the goods are sold. However, victims lose more than goods. They are also hit for cash.
An immensely successful Yahoo Boys’ formula involves sending fake cheques bearing amounts beyond the winning bids for online auctions, and later requesting that the excess be wired back. This scheme, explained a Yahoo Boy, works like magic because the American banking system allows payment immediately a cheque is lodged.
In one of such scams reported by Afro Newspapers, a Nigerian posing as Tinuade Johnson, an international female model, bled Valencia James, an American woman sometime ago, of $2,200. Tinuade’s scheme was an insidious one.
Valencia, who had worked with the American Peace Corps in a few African countries, fell for Tinuade who exploited the American’s concern for the plight of Africans. Valencia, who rents out a room to augment the payment on her mortgage and earn extra bucks, placed on online advertisement for a roommate.
Tinuade responded via e-mail, detailing her desire to relocate to the United States. Valencia was touched. “When you live in a developing country, it’s difficult getting to the States. So, I wanted to help.” She agreed to take Tinuade in.
Unknown to her, she was helping the phoney model to run a game on her. Tinuade sent her a postal money order for $2,800 through a “modeling agent” as payment for the accommodation. She, however, instructed Valencia to deduct $600 and send back the balance by money transfer.
She sent back the balance, but discovered that the money order she lodged at her bank was fake! “It never dawned on me,” lamented Valencia.
It rarely does. Once a victim deposits a money order or cheque and cashes some money, wiring back the excess to an account domiciled in Nigeria is assured. The Yahoo Boy receives his loot via money transfer facilities like the Western Union Money Transfer or Moneygram. This is made easier by the victim’s belief that the transaction is genuine. He then loses money and merchandise.
But the losses are not discovered until weeks later, when banks discovered, during clearing, that the cheques were fake. Added to being stripped of cash and goods, victims are then squeezed by banks to refund the missing cash. Head or tail, the Yahoo Boy wins, slinking away with money and merchandise.
A variation to the theme is the practice of using credit cards. ZN learnt that Yahoo Boys obtain credit card information through hackers’ sites and a software that generates credit card numbers. Once the information is obtained, scammers make purchases with the cards, leaving their owners broke and reeling. Sometimes, fake credit cards are used to make online purchases. This is done in harness with partners based abroad. The goods are sent to these partners, who then send them to Nigeria. This, however, is more dangerous. Being fake, the credit cards return as invalid, putting the receiver of the goods in trouble with those operating in his country.
Yahoo Boys, as sources revealed, are also conscious of the trick’s limitations despite its huge success rate. Sources said fraudsters peg transactions in this category to a maximum of $10,000 at once. The fraudsters stick to this limit to avoid suspicions that may be raised by purchases exceeding $10,000. This is because credit card purchases beyond this usually need authorization of the owners.
Yet, pulling off hauls has never been a problem. Through multiple or split transactions of $2,500 or $5,000, Yahoo Boys leave their victims catching the air. This way, revealed the sources, many Yahoo Boys have made hay.
Despite the popularity of this trick, Yahoo Boys are no one-trick ponies. While the theme of their schemes remain the same, their ceaseless stream of ideas ensure that the tricks are immensely adaptable.
The Yahoo variants of the traditional 419 schemes are instructive. Instead of posing as top government functionaries to sting contract seekers or spamming mails to those gullible to offer their bank accounts for the transfer of trapped money, Yahoo Boys comb Internet chatrooms for preys.
Yet, the criminals are always a step ahead. To overcome foreigners’ reluctance to wire money overseas, Yahoo Boys have started recruiting U.S residents as middlemen. This way, victims are conned to send money or packages to U.S addresses, where their agents send such to them in Nigeria.
Con artists also advertise, online job offers in companies listed as ‘reshipping firms.’
Requirements for the job are made simple for a wider appeal: those hired are entitled to 10 or 15 percent of every item they ship. But such commissions are never paid, said the United States Postal Inspection Service.
Though the FBI, and other organizations and anti-fraud initiatives regularly warn people against falling for these schemes, Yahoo Boy’s have rendered the warnings impotent. One of the dupes’ reaction to such alarms has been to register on 419 Legal website, a genuine South African anti-fraud initiative and use the site’s facility to contact other subscribers.
“They approached our website last year, offering help with tracing offenders in Nigeria. We then launched an investigation, found they were involved in fraud and banned them from our website. But in March this year, the fraudsters reappeared operating from a different server in Nigeria and registering new bogus identities,” Rian Visser, founder of 419 Legal to make appeal for donations in support of anti-fraud initiatives.
The audacity and success of the Yahoo Boys’ have spawned copycats in other countries. An example was a scam attempt sometime ago, reported by the BBC News website.
The website revealed that a band of self-styled “Anti-scam crusaders has been using 419 mass e-mails to solicit money for the publication of a book on how to evade scams. The sender of the e-mail claimed to have “understudied the Nigerian 419 actors…” The mail also said that “a little premium will be required from you if you are interested in obtaining a manuscript for publication in your country.”
Sources confirmed that the Yahoo trend was first noticed in 2003, about the time the EFCC was established.
An EFCC official said “What we had before was traders buying goods from Asia with fake international cheques.” Armed with information on prevailing prices in the international market, the official explained, Nigerian traders would offer to buy at higher prices. The offers lured the manufacturers of such goods into shipping them to Nigeria after they had been paid with fake cheques to clear, the traders would have stolen the goods from the ports.
Though such cheques are still widely used, they have given way to the ease offered by the Internet.
Sometime ago, the EFCC official said, the commission smashed a three-man syndicate which specialized in the printing of fake cheques and money orders. Operating from Somolu, regarded as the capital of such illicit jobs, the three men were caught with cheques of 15 countries and items used for printing. The men were already facing prosecution.
The EFCC has also recorded some success in its crackdown against the Yahoo Boys. But there have been no reasonable convictions. For this, one of the officials blamed the slow process at the courts. The official also admitted that the Yahoo Boys increase in number daily. “We make arrests regularly. This month alone, we have arrested, with sufficient evidence, so many of them,” he said.
The EFCC reckons that Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, is the undisputed headquarters of Yahoo scammers. “It is essentially a Lagos thing, but you also have these criminals in other cities,” disclosed the official. He named Aba, Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Benin, Asaba, Okpanam and Abuja as cities with their fair share of Yahoo con artists.
In Lagos, the major domains of Yahoo Boys are Mushin, Ifako/Ijaye, Akowonjo, Lagos Island, Surulere and Abesan Housing Estate. Others are Shomolu, Ketu, Festac Town and a few in Ikorodu township.
While bloated fake cheques, money orders and sweetheart scams may be the fads in Nigeria, outside, especially among Nigerian fraudsters resident in European countries, lottery scams are the new raves. Sometime ago, the Spanish police arrested, in Madrid, over 300 Nigerians suspected to be involved in crooked lottery scheme. The scam ring was believed to have fleeced over 20,000 people of 100 million Euros. Last year, said Spain’s Interior Ministry, the Nigerian ring sent out about six million letters announcing that their victims had won a premium lottery prize.
The purported winners were then requested to pay an amount of money in taxes before they could receive their cheques. Within nine days, the Spanish Police intercepted 150,000 letters in Malaga, Southern Spain. In the raid that netted the criminals, the police seized 218,000 Euros in cash, 327 computers, 165 fax machines and about 2,000 mobile phones. The Spanish police are still trying to find out if the funds were taken out of the country and if the ring has members outside Spain.
Before the sweeping raid in Spain, anti-fraud agencies in many countries have been kept busy by Nigerian lotto scam rings. Operating under a rash of seemingly genuine names like Golden Strike Lotto Be, Delta Lottery International, Golden Strike Sweepstakes and Premium Trust Agency, the fraudsters’ exploit the greed of their victims. The usual line is to advertise, via e-mails, that people have won hefty prizes in lotteries they did not even play! The prizes usually range between $5 million and $50 million (or pounds).
Gullible winners were then asked to send cheques as payment for “processing advice, handling and opening of account charges” before they could claim their prizes. Sometimes, claims application forms are attached to mails the charges are usually less than $10,000 or percentages on contracts.
They were said to be very active in Holland, from where they burrow into victims’ finances through their grand schemes. Some residents of Bahrain in the Middle East, are known to have been sucked in by the fraudsters. They lost a total of 3,500 Bahrain Dollars as processing fees to Holland-based conmen, who informed them that they had won $5 million in a lottery.
Worried by the success of the criminals, the Dutch government, warned people against such scam mails. The Dutch Consular Agency in Bahrain said many Bahrainis and people in other countries of the world have fallen for the conmen. An investigation into the scams had already started in Holland. But Dutch government officials reckon that the fraudsters may escape prosecution even if they were arrested.
The chance to escape prosecution is offered them by the fact that their correspondence was legally well worded. “It is also difficult to catch these people because their addresses were fake and they use mobile phones. But if they catch them, they have trouble obtaining a conviction,” said a Dutch government official.
Elsewhere, however, anti-fraud squads have succeeded in the prosecution of Nigerian fraudsters. A 30-year old Nigerian was jailed for four years in Hong Kong, on account of a $26 million scam in which he attempted to obtain property by deception and possession of phoney travel papers.
About the same time, Roland Adams, a 38-year old Nigerian, was jailed for eight years in San Francisco, U.S. Adams admitted that he conspired with tricksters in Nigeria, Canada and South Africa to run a fake investment scheme. Prospective investors were mailed letters, purportedly from African government officials, who were keen on diverting millions of dollars held in phoney trusts and accounts.
In exchange for a share of the non-existent loot, victims were lured into sending fees running into several thousands of dollars to individuals or accounts around the world.
Adams offered an illusion of genuineness by setting up websites like Afribankcorp.com, Bancoafrica.com and Bancofesaterncarribean. Through these, bankers could trace the false transactions.
He also forfeited his home, valued at $87,000, and was ordered to pay a restitution of $1.2 million.
But examples like these have failed to discourage Nigeria’s young and restless con artists, whose arsenal of tricks leave law enforcement agents chasing and their victims gasping. A Police official, said the police are hampered by the novelty of cyberscams and, by extension, the absence of a law specifically designed to deal with the trend.
