As soon as possible The boy’s coordination answers the phone, and I get to know his booming voice. I spent on -analized weeks in the catalogs effects in videos and audio notes. Format Boy is not like other influencers: he does not appear his face, and he will not tell me his real name. It does not spread motivational content or searches for profitable brand deals. Instead, his audience knows how to organize high -wage online fraud.
Coordination of the boy – as he makes himself on YouTube, Building, Instagram, and X, gathered thousands of followers and raised hundreds of thousands of views – as an informal consultant for a group of fraudsters in West Africa known as the children Yahoo.
These electronic Hungarians, most of whom are young, usually work from their phones or laptops to the wealthy foreigners – the Americans – from their savings in their lives. Some have begun to use the exchange of face and conflicts to enhance their phone. In one of the recent developments, Yahoo Boys has published fake broadcasts from CNN with news broadcasters created from artificial intelligence designed to deceive people who blackmail them to believe that they had been ignored in the news.
Often in Nigeria, boys Yahoo builds complicated relations with their victims for weeks or months before they extract any money they can. They are not technically sophisticated fraudsters, but they are graceful and professional social engineers. The victims in the United States, the United Kingdom and other places have lost millions in front of Yahoo Boys in recent years, and according to teenage children their private lives after they were extorted and sextorted by them.
Yahoo Boys has their terms – a kind of type – helps them to run fraud (and may avoid moderation teams on social media). The victims are called “clients”. The bombing includes a correspondence of hundreds of novels online to see if someone is responding. Frauds are known as “coordination” (and thus the name boy). There are formats for all occasions. Romantic and dating formats try to make people fall in love; Police officers and FBI officials are imitated in plagiarism frauds. Elon Musk format pretends to be Centibillaire. There are investment fraud, gift card fraud, the list continues. Hundreds of text programs, which can be copied and paste directly to the victim, float around the Internet. One of them is called “50 questions to ask your customer like Yahoo’s boy.”
There is a complete bustle culture that surrounds the children of Yahoo. They form with luxury cars and wearing complex jewelry. On social media, hundreds of pages and groups claim, and they often use “Yahoo” explicitly in their names, to direct the new arrivals, teach them the skills they need to deceive people, and provide them with the tools needed to do so.
Format Boy is one of the most prominent, or at least clarity, from the owners of Scamfluences – his posts are often marked by cybersecurity researchers who follow children Yahoo.
“I will inform you completely how to make a fake video call in this video,” says Fort Boy. Deepfake video call is made on the screen. A brief text banner says it is for educational purposes only. Six of the most popular video clips of Format Boy, in fact, revolves around the creation of Deepfakes, with others who explain how Yahoo Boy works. “Fake video calls are very important,” says in a voice note on Telegram. “Sometimes your customers cannot issue some information to you without seeing you physically, without seeing you on the camera.”
Clarification: Manuel Citin
Format Boy started working in 2019, using a cheap phone for potential victims on dating sites. From there, he entered the field of teaching people his methods and selling software, evidence and tools. But on the phone with me, Format Boy is to move away from the fraud. “This is not a really person I do,” he says. “At some point I was doing it, but I stopped in the end, and I started working … I went to edit the video and artificial intelligence research,” he says.
He complains that over the past three years, YouTube has removed its channels several times, which resets the pledge of his followers on every occasion. When he is pushed, he admits that what he publishes online can help people break the law. He says, “I will not lie to you. This is the truth; it is encouraging for them.” It is more active on Telegram channel where it regularly sends messages and sound audio notes – which reach nine minutes – to 15,000 subscribers. His posts provide advice on things such as how to build confidence with a “customer” to reach their bank accounts, recommendations and offers for artificial intelligence programs that Yahoo Boys can use to change their appearance in video calls with potential victims. In one publications, it tells a promotional offer for Valentine’s Day on this Deepfake program – designed from 60,000 Niger Nalira (about $ 38) to $ 15,000 ($ 9.50).
