Catfishing became a popular term with the 2010 publication of an indie film by the same name. As a documentary shot in real-time using smartphone cameras, two film producers, Henry and Ariel, followed their friend Nev’s growing attachment to an attractive woman he met online.

The story unfolds with countless Facebook exchanges over several months between Nev, who lives in New York, and his Facebook girlfriend, Abby, who lives in Michigan. After becoming increasingly suspicious of inconsistencies in the stories and messaging, the three friends decide to make a surprise road trip to Michigan to meet Abby. Their worst suspicions were confirmed.

Arriving unannounced at Abby’s house, they learn that “Abby” is a fictional persona. Abby and the other family members they had been communicating with online were actually fictitious personas created by a single person, Angela, who was dealing with personal issues and living a complicated life, including raising a young son with intellectual disabilities.

This documentary of romantic deception fueled by Angela’s personal misery became a cultural phenomenon. It sparked discussions about the authenticity of online interactions and the blurring lines between reality and fiction in the internet era.

The Thriving Cybercrime Industry

Over the past 15 years, misguided romantic innocence has given way to malicious cybercrime, which is now pervasive on the internet. Social media apps are the gateways for cyberscams. With the public’s media-fixated eyes glued to their social media apps, virtual scams have grown exponentially in the largely unregulated universe of the internet and are operating in countries with little or no capacity for oversight.

While multiple cybercriminal organizations perpetrate many types of scams, I will focus on the so-called romance scams. The relatively innocent catfishing of 2010 is better known today as pig butchering and sextortion.

Romance scams are big business. In 2022, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) found that victims lost a total of $3.3 billion in 2022, more than double the reported losses in 2021. Because so few of these crimes are reported, these losses are underestimated.

No single cyberfraud organization has a monopoly on the romance scam industry, but one group of scammers stands head and shoulders above the rest: the Yahoo Boys.

The Yahoo Boys: An Unregulated Brand and Growing Threat

Operating out of Western Africa, primarily Nigeria, the Yahoo Boys are a self-organized (leaderless) and emergent (growing organically) network of media-savvy con artists who are successfully fleecing English-speaking victims out of their wealth — and sometimes their lives.

WIRED magazine quoted Paul Raffile, an intelligence analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute, who gave an apt description of this group:

The Yahoo Boys have elements of organized crime and disorganized crime. They don’t have a leader, they don’t have a governance structure.

Operating individually and through loosely organized groups, their numbers total or exceed 200,000 scammers. Like the street gangs in Haiti that learned to join forces rather than compete with one another, scammers who identify as “yahoo-yahoo” openly communicate with one another and exchange tips for improving their scams.

According to Kathy Waters, co-founder of the nonprofit Advocating Against Romance Scammers, these scammers use multiple social media accounts to sell scripts, photos, and personal identification information. The scripts, which others can copy and use, teach novice scammers to engage and manipulate targets socially. One fraud fighter describes seeing scripts for use by scammers that run for 30 to 60 interchanges with a target. When they exceed the script, they improvise.

Yahoo boys conduct their nefarious business while consorting with one another with impunity. Their favored social media platforms (Instagram, Snapchat, Wizz, WhatsApp) cannot keep up with monitoring the number of fake accounts they set up daily. When advocacy organizations or investigative reports identify fake accounts, the scammers will close the compromised accounts, only to have new fakes set up to take their place.

Romance Becomes Sextortion

The Yahoo boys ply their scams by targeting communities where they capture local identities. Their typical approach is to “bomb” high schools, youth sports teams and universities with fake accounts, using advanced social engineering tactics to coerce their victims into a compromising situation. They create fake social media profiles often posing as peers or individuals with similar interests to their target demographic. These profiles are designed to appear legitimate, engaging, and trustworthy to facilitate initial contact.

Out of this “bombing” strategy, the scammer will snare a lonely victim (often a boy) who is captivated by the attention of an adoring “female.” Once contact is established, the scammer employs advanced social engineering tactics to build trust and rapport with their victim. This may involve conversations that gradually escalate in intimacy, flattery, and sharing personal experiences or interests. The goal is to lower the victim’s guard and make them more susceptible to manipulation.

As trust builds, the criminals coax or manipulate their victims into sharing intimate photos, videos, or information. This is often done under the guise of reciprocation in a seemingly mutual exchange or through direct requests that exploit the victim’s trust and emotional connection.

Once the scammer obtains compromising material, they threaten to release it publicly or to the victim’s family, friends, and online networks unless a ransom is paid. The demands can involve money, further explicit material, or other forms of extortion.

The Old Can Be As Vulnerable As The Young

Although sextortion scams target vulnerable youths, older people are vulnerable to sextortion or to another scam, pig-butchering. A case-in-point is a 75-year-old professional who lives in the American Midwest who replied to a notification in his LinkedIn account by a Chinese woman who sent a note saying she thought the man’s profile was impressive.

The woman told the target that she lived in San Francisco, where she worked for her uncle, who was made wealthy through investments. She posed as a beautiful young woman with lots of money and few cares. She sent him pictures of herself trying on designer clothes, dining in fine restaurants, and posing next to her luxury car.

In this case, the beautiful young woman was a model hired by the scammer to have these photos taken.

Building his trust and affection over numerous WhatsApp exchanges, she convinced him to invest in her uncle’s management fund using her uncle’s proprietary software. Beginning with small investments and showing a profitable “return,” she persuaded him to increase his investments. When account managers at the target’s bank grew alarmed by the size of his withdrawals, they warned him of the likely scam. To no avail, the target trusted his new love, as “evidenced by” returns posted in the uncle’s investment app.

The story ends with the target, now a victim, having lost $715,000 to the scammers, which was his entire fortune. Believing in his love until the end, he became suicidal and begged for her mercy by returning his lost money. Realizing that his pleas were for naught, he decided to turn over all his saved screen-shots to the Wall Street Journal, hoping his story might save others from the same disastrous plight.

Yahoo Boys Improve their Nefarious Craft with Deepfakes

Yahoo Boys and other scammers are increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI) to convince victims that their romantic overtures are real. As reported by WIRED magazine, scammers use devices and apps to replicate someone’s face, facial expressions, gestures, voice, etc., so that the scammer can pretend to be someone they aren’t with almost perfect accuracy.

Their most common method is to use a webcam to capture their face. Software running on their laptop changes their appearance. The scammers can see their own faces alongside the altered deep fake, with the manipulated image displayed over the live video call.

Another strategy involves using two phones and a face-swapping app. The scammer holds the first phone to call the victim, with the phone’s rear camera recording the screen of a second phone. This second phone has its camera pointing at the scammer’s face and is running a face-swapping app. The scammer often places the two phones on stands to ensure the phones don’t move. Light rings are used to improve conditions for a real-time face swap.

Calculating the Toll of Sextortion on Victims

Victims of sextortion and pig butchering experience incredible shame and humiliation. In spite of the reluctance to come forward, in 2022, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported 7,000 sextortion complaints involving 3,000 victims, mostly minor boys.

Worse than the loss of money is the loss of life. More than a dozen sextortion victims were reported to have died by suicide in 2022.

The psychological profile varies for victims of romance scams, but adult victims tend to be White/Caucasian, educated, trusting, somewhat impulsive, and more isolated (that is, have a smaller network of friends and family).

As noted, international gangs also target young people in sexploitation scams. But often, these crimes are local. The young people know their perpetrator. In one study, the victims were mostly females, and 60% knew the perpetrators in person as romantic partners. While international scammers want money, domestic perpetrators coerce young victims into giving them compromising images that they then use to bully and abuse the victim, sometimes urging the victims to harm themselves.

Victims, young and old, who survive these scams suffer from multiple psychiatric conditions as a consequence, including anxiety, depression, loss of trust, feelings of powerlessness, guilt, and panic attacks.

What Can Be Done To Recover From “Romance” Crimes?

First and foremost, no youth or adult should be left alone to confront the trauma of being victimized by a cyber-scammer. What victims need is love and support, not negative judgment and blame.

For children and adults who are victims of cyber-romance crimes, seek treatment, as available, from professionals who are experienced in treating cyber-related trauma. Another important resource is local support groups (if available) or virtual support groups.

An excellent YouTube video features adult women and men telling their stories about being scammed. Published by Cybercrime Support National (CSN), the video is titled A Path to Healing: Romance Scam Recovery Group. The CSN offers a free 10-week Peer Support Program for romance scam survivors.

Other online resources offering education and support include:

• Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams (SCARS)
• Support for Romance Scam Survivors
• AARP Fraud Watch Network
• Springboard Community Services

Parents can protect their minor children by educating them about the dangers of connecting with unknown persons who suddenly appear in their media feeds. Although adolescents are especially prone to keeping secrets, parents should let their children know they will not be punished for sharing information that suggests risks to a child’s or a friend’s well-being.

Parents should engage their children in open conversations about romantic relationships and the signs of manipulation. Parents should learn the warning signs of children who are being traumatized, which may include social withdrawal, changes in sleep patterns, avoidance of eye contact, and lack of enthusiasm.

Final thoughts: The Pain and Price of Cybercrimes: Pig Butchering and Sextortion

Romance cybercrimes are on the rise and becoming more dangerous with AI platforms and deep fake impersonation. Victims of romance fraud should not feel alone. If you are a victim, you can reclaim your life by seeking support to overcome the shame and guilt. If you are the parent of a youth victim, accept and understand the reality of the child’s situation, protect them from further abuse, and partner with them to shoulder the burden of recovery.