By Emmanuel Ogbodo
Meta has announced the removal of 63,000 Facebook accounts linked to Nigerians involved in financial sextortion scams. The company disclosed this in a statement titled “Combating Financial Sextortion Scams from Nigeria,” released on Wednesday.
This announcement follows a recent $220 million fine imposed by the Nigerian Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) against Meta and WhatsApp for alleged discriminatory practices against Nigerians.
Sextortion involves extorting money or sexual favours by threatening to expose evidence of someone’s sexual activities. Meta highlighted the severe impact of financial sextortion and noted an increase in scams driven by cybercriminals, notably those referred to as “Yahoo Boys,” targeting users online.
Meta stated, “We’ve banned Yahoo Boys under Meta’s Dangerous Organisations and Individuals policy—one of our strictest policies—which means we remove accounts engaged in this criminal activity whenever we become aware of them.”
The company reported disrupting two sets of accounts linked to Yahoo Boys attempting financial sextortion. The first set involved approximately 63,000 accounts, including a coordinated network of 2,500 accounts connected to about 20 individuals who targeted mainly adult men in the US using fake identities.
Meta identified and removed these accounts through a combination of new technical signals and detailed investigations by its expert teams. Many of these accounts had already been detected and disabled by Meta’s enforcement systems, with the investigation helping to eliminate the remaining accounts and enhance detection techniques.
The second part of Meta’s effort involved removing around 7,200 assets from Nigeria, including 1,300 Facebook accounts, 200 Facebook Pages, and 5,700 Facebook Groups. These assets were used to offer scam scripts, guides, and links to photos for creating fake accounts.
Meta added that since the disruption, its systems have been actively blocking attempts by these groups to reappear, and the company continues to strengthen its automated detection systems.
