Typically, Yahoo boy Fraud message hundreds of people online while posing as members of the opposite sex with images from social media profiles. They run all kinds of scams, but for those that involve blackmail, they often try to build a relationship with their potential victim and obtain compromising information – most commonly from nude pictures. Then they move the gears.
“At some point they reveal their identity after they get everything they need, and then they start blackmailing,” says Maimon. They demand money and threaten to post pictures online or send them to family and friends if they don’t get paid. “One of the approaches they use to make sure the extortion is realistic is to produce these news clips that they send to the victims and in a way push them, train them to pay the extortion “, he says. “They are trying to meet you under conditions of urgency under stressful conditions.”
Yahoo Boy scammers extensively use the social media platform Telegram to organize themselves, chat with each other, and as a marketplace where they sell knowledge and tutorials on how to operate various types of scams. The “news” videos seen by Wired appear to contain the details and images of real-world victims, although it was not possible to immediately verify the cases.
Brian Mason, a police officer with the Edmonton Police Service in Canada who investigates fraud and works with victims of scams, has seen cases where videos or screenshots of fake CNN broadcasts were sent to victims. “It looks like a typical CNN show,” says Mason. “It’s very, very convincing.” According to Mason, the approach has been used in Sextortion is cheatingwhich usually target teenagers and have been linked to a number of suicides.
Mason says he has seen incidents where the news reports falsely accuse scam victims of talking to underage women and that police are looking for them or have issued warrants for their arrest. “It makes the victim panic because now they see themselves on this show and it’s a screen capture of when they were actually talking to the scammer from their own webcam,” Mason adds. The effect can potentially make the person send money or comply with demands from the scammers.
Telegram did not immediately respond to Wired’s request for comment on the blackmail checks contained in Yahoo Boy channels. Last year Telegram More than a dozen Yahoo Boy channels removed After Wire reported on her public activities; However, the scammers are still present on the platform and Other social media platformsincluding Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube.
Messages shared on Telegram channels show how the scammers quickly develop their cons, use new technologies and share or sell advice extensively with each other. For example, when people moved to Chinese alternative Rednote Before Ban Tiktok’s proposed ban in the US earlier this month, Yahoo Boys recommended targeting people who had joined the app.
