Yahoo Boy Scammers usually send hundreds of people online while posing as members of the opposite sex using photos stolen from social media profiles. They have all types of scams, but for those who involve extortion, they often try to build a relationship with their potential victim and obtain compromise information – mostly nude images. Then they move gears.
“At some point, they reveal their identity after getting everything they need, and then they start to blackmail,” says Maimon. They demand money and threaten to release pictures online or send to family and friends if they are not paid. “One of the approaches they use to make sure the extortion is realistic is to produce the news clips they send to the victims and push them in a way, push them to pay the extortion,” he says. “They try to push you to make decisions under conditions of stress, under urgent conditions.”
Yahoo Boy fans use widely use the social media platform telegram as a way to organize, talk to each other, and as a market where they sell knowledge and tutorials on how to operate different types of scams. The “news” videos seen by Wired appear to include the details and images of the actual victims, although it was not possible to verify the cases immediately.
Brian Mason, a constable with the Edmonton Police Service in Canada who is investigating fraud and working with the victims of scams, says he saw where videos or screens of false CNN broadcasts were sent to the victims. “It looks like your typical CNN broadcast,” says Mason. “It’s very, very convincing.” Mason says the approach was used in Sextorsion’s scams, which usually target teens and linked to a series of suicide.
Mason says he saw incidents where the news grip falsely accuses the victims of scam of talking to minor women and that the police have been looking for them or issued warrants for their arrest. “It panicked the victim because now they see themselves on this broadcast, and it’s a screen recording of when they actually talked to the scammer of their own webcam,” Mason adds. The effect may force the person to send money or follow the demands of the scammers.
Telegram did not immediately respond to Wired’s request for comment on the extortion fraud in Yahoo Boy channels. Last year, Telegram removed more than a dozen Yahoo Boy channels after Wired reported on their public activities; However, the scammers still have a presence on the platform and other social media platforms, including Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube.
Messages shared within Telegram channels show how the fraudsters quickly develop their disadvantages, use new technologies, and share or sell with each other. For example, when people moved to the Chinese alternative red notes earlier this month before the proposed Tiktok ban in the US, Yahoo Boys recommended that they target people who joined the app.