YAHOO Boys Invade FaceBook To Scam People

If you think the last has been heard about the advance fee internet fraudsters known as Yahoo…Yahoo boys, then you are far from the truth. The scam boys we heard have now formed a new strategy by using Facebook to carry out their illicit act.

Unlike the Yahoo! Mail hitherto being used by this group to dupe people, Facebook is their new haven. Facebook is originally meant to make friends and share ideas. But Yahoo boys are seeing it as another opportunity to advance their trade using it to take advantage of innocent ‘Facebook friends’.  Before now, scamming in Nigeria was the most common type. The messages would generally claim that your help was needed to access a large sum of money, usually millions of dollars, which in fact do not exist.

The messages are an open gambit designed to draw potential victims deeper into the scam. Aside that, money transfer request is another scheme they use in scamming people. With the rising of internet banking, it is now easier to transfer money across the world in minutes. Unfortunately, this has also meant an increase in the number and types of scams Yahoo boys engage in. They trick you into sending your hard-earned cash to overseas scammers, albeit unknowingly. There is also the inheritance scam whereby the scammer would tell you that you are entitled  to claim a large inheritance from a distant relative or wealthy benefactor who has died overseas.

Now, the Facebook scam is called dating scam.

Besides just asking for money for their studies, sick relatives and others, the scammers also upload fake but attractive photos; in most cases, of white people. They pretend to be foreign specialists working in Nigeria or Ghana (usually originally from US and UK, but it may also be Canada, Australia or any other European country). After establishing intimate correspondences with you, falling in love and maybe even send a couple of cheap presents, they will then deploy the follow-up plan. They will tell you that when they were on their way to meet you, they got robbed, beaten, and landed in the hospital, asking you as their only contact, to come to their aid by forwarding money for their medical bills.

Another thing they say is that, their employer pays them with money order, and they can’t cash them in Nigeria. They will then send you the supposed money order and ask you to deposit them into your bank account and then wire the money to them via Western Union. Now, once you cash them or deposit them into your account, the money order will come back to you after few weeks as fraudulent and you will be responsible for paying back the money to the bank and sometimes even charged for passing counterfeit instrument.  The warning is, everyone should just be watchful and be very careful with who they get acquainted with on Facebook as the Yahoo boys have now made the social media their new haven.