As soon as The Boy format responds to the phone, I recognize his developing voice. I spent weeks immersed in the rear catalog of movies and voice notes. The Boy format is not like other influential: it does not show the face and will not tell me his real name. He does not publish motivational content or look for lucrative brand offers. Instead, he teaches its audience how to organize high -paid online fraud.
Boy format – because it is styling on YouTube, Telegram, Instagram and X, where he gathered thousands of followers and collected hundreds of thousands of views – they act as an unofficial consultant of a sedate collective fraud from West Africa known as boys yahoo.
Usually these cyber criminals, mainly youthful men, work from phones or laptops after luxurious foreigners – often Americans – about life savings. Some began to employ the flow of the face and deep wardrobes to improve their size. In one recent development, the boys yahoo published the false CNN broadcasts of Newscasters generated by AI, designed to deceive people who blackmail to think that they were published in messages.
Often in Nigeria, the boys yahoo build complicated relations with their victims within weeks or months, before they extract every possible cash. They are not the most technically sophisticated cheaters, but there are agile and skillful social engineers. The victims in the USA, Great Britain and other countries have lost millions of Yahoo boys in recent years, and many teenage boys reportedly took their lives after they were blackmail and sextorted.
Yahoo boys have their own terminology – a kind of code – which helps them start fraud (and potentially avoid moderation teams in social media). The victims are called “clients”. “Bombing” includes sending hundreds of online accounts to see if someone is answering. The fraud is known as “formats” (hence the name Boy Format). And there are formats for all occasions. Romance and dating formats try to fall in love with people; FBI policemen and officials are imitated in impersonation of fraud; Elon Musk’s formats pretend to be gentilionire. There are investment frauds, gift cards fraud, the list is long. Hundreds of scripts that can be copied and pasted directly into the victim float around the Internet. One is called “50 questions to ask your client as a boy yahoo”.
The whole culture of Hustle surrounding Yahoo boys surrounds. They pose with luxury cars and wear complicated jewelry. In social media, hundreds of pages and groups, often explicitly using “yahoo” in their names, claim that the mentoring of newcomers teach them the skills that people need, and providing them tools for this.
The Boy format is one of the more apparent, or at least obvious of these “fraudsters” – its posts are often marked by cybersecurity researchers who follow Yahoo boys.
“I will teach you exactly how to make a false video combination in this movie,” says Boy format at the beginning of his most popular movie on YouTube. Dramatic music collects when it is performed on the screen. A low text banner says that it is only for educational purposes. In fact, the six most popular films Boy’s format consisted in creating deep wardrobes, while others describe in detail how Yahoo Boy frauds work. “False video connections are very important,” he says with a voice note on a telegram. “Sometimes your customers cannot give you information without seeing you physically, not seeing you in front of the camera.”
Illustration: Manuel Cetin
The Boy format began to work around 2019, using a inexpensive phone to spam potential victims on dating sites. From there, he began to teach people his methods and sell them software, guides and tools. But on the phone with me, the Boy format will quickly get out of fraud. “This is not something I really do personally,” he says, a claim that he repeats many times, although he admits that he has at least practical experience. “At some point I did it, but finally I stopped and started to do … I went to the video and AI testing,” he says.
He complains that in the last three years YouTube has removed his channels many times, resetting the number of followers every time. After pushing, he admits that what he publishes online can lend a hand people break the law. “I will not lie to you. It’s true; he encourages them,” he says. He is the most lively on his telegram channel, where he regularly sends messages and wandering voice notes – some up to nine minutes – up to 15,000 subscribers. His posts give advice on how to build trust with a “customer” to access their bank accounts as well as recommendations and offers of AI software, from which Yahoo Boys can employ to change the appearance on video connections with potential victims. In one post he advertises the Valentine’s promotional offer on this Deepfake software – consisting of 60,000 Nigerian Naira (about USD 38) to USD 15,000 (USD 9.50).