The parent company of Instagram and Facebook said on Wednesday that it had removed about 63,000 Instagram accounts and thousands of Facebook accounts in Nigeria that were trying to target people in sextortion schemes.
Sexual extortion, or sextortion, involves persuading someone to send explicit photos online and then threatening to make the images public if the victim does not pay money or obtain sexual favors.
Such scammers typically pose as young women online to trick people into sending sexually explicit material before blackmailing them.
Sextortion cases have increased in recent years, particularly driven by a loosely organized group called the Yahoo Boys, which operates primarily out of Nigeria, Meta said. The company added that it had applied its policy on “dangerous organizations and individuals” to remove Facebook accounts and groups run by the group.
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“Following our recent Q1 2024 Adversarial Threat Report, today we are announcing the strategic network disruption of two sets of accounts in Nigeria that were affiliated with Yahoo Boys and were attempting to engage in financial sextortion scams.
First, we removed around 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria that attempted to directly engage in financial sextortion scams. They targeted primarily adult men in the US and used fake accounts to mask their identities,” Meta wrote in its blog on Wednesday.
The company also says it’s removed 200 Facebook Pages and 5,700 Facebook Groups, also based in Nigeria, that were providing tips for conducting scams.
“Their efforts included offering to sell scripts and guides to use when scamming people, and sharing links to collections of photos to use when populating fake accounts.”
Experts and authorities have previously warned social media users to remain aware and alert over the dangerous rise of scams.
Last year, two Nigerian men were extradited from Lagos to the US to face charges over an alleged sextortion case that led to a Michigan teen taking his own life. Samuel Ogoshi, 22, and Samson Ogoshi, 20 pleaded guilty in April, although their sentence has not yet been announced.
