Meta has disabled more than 63,000 Instagram accounts it says were used by criminals to target U.S. men with a sextortion scam.
The company said it found a network of 2,500 accounts that were being run by as few as 20 individuals. The accounts were affiliated with a group called “the Yahoo Boys” that appear to be running a number of financial scams from Nigeria.
According to the company, it starts out as a romance scam, with scammers pretending to be a woman in the U.S. or Europe. As the online romance progresses, the scammer will ask the man to send a nude photo of himself.
If he does, the scammer drops the pretense and gets down to business. The victim is told to pay a ransom of the photos will be distributed to the victim’s contacts, which the scammer has acquired by other means.
Meta said it believes it was able to reduce the number of actual victims by identifying the bad actors and taking down the accounts before any damage was done. It said it is going public in an effort to warn people not to engage with anyone asking for nude pictures.
An FBI warning
The FBI last year issued a warning to the public about sextortion scams, especially ones involving underage males. Under federal law, anyone distributing a sexually explicit photograph of an underage person can be charged with child pornography, even if the photo is of themselves.
The scammer threatens to distribute the photo unless a payment is made using gift cards. In 2023, authorities said at least one suicide resulted from the scam. Authorities said that scam surged in 2023 and now appears to be running on a massive scale overseas.
In addition to removing accounts, Meta said it is implementing features to help prevent users from falling victim to sextortion scams, including “on-device nudity protection,” which will automatically blur any image that contains nudity in direct messages.
