Meta announced that it has removed approximately 63,000 Instagram accounts operating in Nigeria that were involved in sexual extortion scams and eliminated numerous Facebook groups and pages aimed at recruiting and training new scammers.
Sextortion, the act of coercing individuals to send explicit photos online and then threatening to distribute the images unless a ransom is paid or sexual favors are provided, has been on the rise, with cases linked to Yahoo Boys, an unorganized group mainly based in Nigeria.
The big picture: Noteworthy cases of sextortion include two Nigerian brothers who admitted to sexually extorting teen boys and young men in Michigan and a Virginia sheriff’s deputy who engaged in sexual extortion and abduction of a 15-year-old girl.
- The FBI has expressed concerns about a significant increase in sextortion cases targeting children, particularly boys aged 14 to 17, prompting a warning to all parents and guardians.
- Meta’s investigation revealed that while the majority of scam attempts targeting adult men in the U.S. were unsuccessful, there were instances where minors were targeted, leading to reports filed with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
- Meta identified and removed a network of approximately 2,500 accounts associated with a group of 20 individuals engaged in fraudulent activities.
