In the late 90s and early 2000s, as internet connectivity began penetrating west Africa, young people soon realised that individuals in North America and Europe with access to more money than them and potentially susceptible to blackmail were now reachable by the click of a button.
Along came the “Nigerian prince” letters, a famous scamming technique employed by online fraudsters – known as Yahoo boys in Nigeria, Sakawa boys of Ghana and the brouteurs of Ivory Coast – preying on unsuspecting targets across the web. The emails typically involved someone pretending to be Nigerian royalty and asking for money, a claim so outlandish that victims presumed it couldn’t be a lie.
On and off school campuses, cybercafes were the only way for most of the population to surf the internet. Young men saved or borrowed to “buy time” as ticket slips were called, to quickly tweak letter templates and send to mass recipients, hoping for a lucky break given stark unemployment levels in Nigeria.
As telcos reduced data subscription prices and security personnel began hunting letter-writers, more scammers invested in home-based connections and pivoted to newer techniques – targeting elderly foreigners, cryptocurrency scams, business compromise emails, catfish romance scams and online Ponzi schemes – to boost success rates. And then the fast-growing scam of sextortion: the art of blackmailing people for money for sexual footage in the possession of perpetrators.
The rise in global fintechs and, consequently, multiple payment options has also widened their target reach to more people. In parts of Ghana and Nigeria, apartments turned incubator campuses called “hustle kingdoms” (HK) or academies are springing up: there, groups of young people, some as young as 13, stay and learn fraud basics.
They are increasingly inspired by an aspirational lifestyle known as “Dorime culture”, which is named after the worldwide dance music megahit Ameno Amapiano Remix, and revolves around lounges and nightclubs across Nigeria where patrons compete in the showy purchase of expensive alcohol to flaunt how wealthy and popular they are.
Titi Adesanya, director of operations for the Africa arm of the music label Empire, said: “[People] want to see their name in the lights and some beautiful girl carrying drinks walking to them and the entire club stops … human beings are inherently selfish and egotistical.”
The new dream for many youths, especially in suburban areas, is to drive flashy cars and have young girls ooh and aah their every move. That love for the spotlight has driven many into cybercrime, just like Ramon “Hushpuppi” Abbas, the Instagram influencer serving 11 years in a New Jersey prison for money laundering after targeting his victims with online scams.
But his case is not a deterrent: instead, minors keen to get started in fraud are getting creative.
“When you hear that a 12-year-old boy has been sent to jail … [it is] because they go and agree with some authorities and do age declaration [affidavits, falsely] stating that they are 18 just to enable them to open [a bank] account and put their criminal structures in place,” said Effa Okim, a director at Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in charge of Edo, Delta and Ondo states, a known axis for cybercrime.
In recent months, there has been a wave of sextortion-related arrests in Nigeria.
Two men were arrested and charged in March after an Australian teenager killed himself last year. Within days, the US attorney’s office in Michigan announced the extradition of two brothers from Lagos in another case of sextortion investigated by the FBI.
According to US law enforcement agencies, there are many perpetrators of sextortion in west Africa, especially in Nigeria and Ivory Coast. At the end of July, the tech company Meta announced the closure of 63,000 Nigerian-based Facebook accounts used for these scams, which targeted adult men primarily.
The surge in sextortion crimes led to the FBI director, Christopher Wray, flying to Abuja in June to meet Nigeria’s president, Bola Tinubu, and discuss, among other things, partnering to combat cybercrime. That same month, Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission signed a deal in conjunction with the FBI to launch a cybercrime research lab.
“[This] will significantly enhance our capabilities to prevent, detect, and prosecute financial crimes,” the EFCC chair, Olanipekun Olukoyede, said at the time.
The rise of these cybercrime academies that are breeding a “new generation of skilled individuals with malicious intent” would hurt Nigeria’s “economy, national security and international reputation”, said John Odumesi, an Abuja-based cybersecurity expert. He said the government needed to address “the cultural influences of the Dorime phenomenon and promoting alternative values” immediately.
