In his debut book, journalist Carlos Barragan explores the complex world of Nigerian romance scammers known as “Yahoo boys,” shedding light on both the perpetrators and their victims. The term refers to young men in Lagos who use internet-based email addresses to defraud foreigners, often exploiting lonely individuals seeking companionship online. Barragan’s investigation offers a nuanced account of these scammers’ lives, situating them within broader social and economic contexts.

The phenomenon dates back to at least the 1940s, with early warnings from U.S. diplomatic cables about Nigerian youths soliciting money under false pretenses. However, it was the advent of internet access in Lagos’s impoverished neighborhoods that enabled this illicit trade to flourish. Barragan’s interest in the subject was initially personal: his mother was targeted by a man posing as a U.S. soldier on a dating app. This prompted Barragan to travel to Lagos’s Ikotun district, where he encountered a group far less sophisticated than the public imagination might suggest. Rather than masterminds, many of the Yahoo boys were young men addicted to drugs, relying on rote scripts to extract money through gift cards and cryptocurrencies.

Barragan challenges the simplistic narrative of these scammers as mere criminals by exploring how both scammers and victims navigate loneliness and isolation in the digital age. He argues that the commodification of human connection plays a central role in facilitating the scams, with tech platforms inadvertently enabling exploitation. Throughout the book, Barragan also highlights Nigeria’s troubled history of colonial exploitation and internal corruption as underlying factors driving economic desperation.

The book further details the emotional toll on victims, including intimate interviews with individuals whose lives were upended by scams. One victim recounts the powerful allure of brief human acknowledgment during online exchanges, describing it as a “five-second window” that ensnared her despite the deception. In a striking example of the complexity of the issue, Barragan profiles Miracle, a female scammer whose operations include emotionally manipulative adoption schemes. Barragan notes that female scammers are less visible but often more calculated than their male counterparts.

Ultimately, the book portrays a world where technology’s promise of connection is compromised by indifference and exploitation. Barragan reflects on his own position as a journalist confronting poverty and deception, acknowledging the fraught dynamic between observer and subject. Through its empathetic yet critical lens, the book offers a multifaceted perspective on the human costs behind one of the internet’s most notorious fraud networks.