The Yahoo Boys: Inside the Lives of Nigeria's Romance Scammers

A closely observed work of narrative nonfiction about four young romance scammers in Lagos, Nigeria, as they struggle to get by in one of the world's most unequal cities.

Ikotun, one of Lagos's poorest neighborhoods, lies ten miles and a world away from the towers and beaches at the heart of Nigeria's megacity. By day, the market vibrates with the sound of traders hawking their wares. By night, thousands of workers of another kind begin their shifts in bars and crumbling apartments: these are the Yahoo Boys.

Mostly men in their teens and twenties, many turning to drugs to stay awake as they chat with "clients" overseas, the Yahoo Boys are online romance scammers. Whether impersonating male celebrities or anonymous young women, each year they catfish millions of dollars from victims. Some have attained the status of folk heroes, while thousands more "cash out" only to lose it all.

Inspired by his mother's own brush with a scammer, the journalist Carlos Barragán takes us on a journey to understand the lives of the Yahoo Boys of Ikotun. We meet Biggy and Chibuike, each struggling with the temptations of fast money; Azeez, a tailor's apprentice caught between the lure of crime and Nigeria's economic crisis; and Richie, who is convinced that he's responsible for the death of a woman in Kentucky he manipulated online for years.

Written with sensitivity and nuance, and posing difficult questions about reparations and the Western loneliness epidemic, The Yahoo Boys is this generation's Behind the Beautiful Forevers--the work of a blazing new journalistic talent.