META Platforms has taken action against a large-scale “sextortion” operation in Nigeria. The company announced that it had removed approximately 63,000 Instagram accounts involved in financial sexual extortion scams, primarily targeting adult men in the United States.
Reuters reports that Meta also deleted 7,200 Facebook accounts, pages, and groups that were providing tips on how to scam people. The operation included a smaller coordinated network of around 2,500 accounts linked to a group of about 20 individuals.
“Sextortion” involves threatening individuals with the release of compromising photos, either real or fabricated, unless they pay to prevent their distribution.
Meta’s investigation revealed that while most scam attempts were unsuccessful, there were also attempts targeting minors. The company reported these cases to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the U.S.
According to Reuters, Nigerian online fraudsters, known as “Yahoo boys,” are notorious for various scams, including impersonating people in financial need or Nigerian princes offering exceptional investment returns.
Meta has employed new technical signals to identify sex extortion attempts. Reuters also highlighted the historical context of Nigerian scams, referencing the term “419 scams,” which derives from the section of Nigeria’s penal code addressing fraud.
As reported by Reuters, some of the removed accounts were providing guidance on conducting scams, including selling scripts and guides, and sharing links to collections of photos for creating fake profiles.
