Meta has announced the removal of approximately 63,000 accounts in Nigeria that were attempting to engage in financial scams involving sexual extortion, primarily targeting adult men in the United States.
In a statement, Meta revealed that the 63,000 accounts were on Instagram, and it also deleted 7,200 Facebook accounts, pages, and groups dedicated to providing advice on how to scam users of these social networks.
The company also dismantled a smaller coordinated network of about 2,500 individuals linked to a group of around 20 people.
This wave of scams includes sexual extortion or "sextortion," where victims are trapped and threatened with having compromising photos, real or fake, published if they do not pay the blackmailers.
Most scam attempts have failed, and while they primarily targeted adults, there have also been attempts against minors, which Meta reported to the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Meta representatives stated that this is not the first time scammers have disrupted its networks, but the public disclosure of this information aims to raise awareness.
In Nigeria, online fraudsters are known and even organized into gangs. One such group calls itself "Yahoo boys." They are notorious for scams ranging from portraying individuals in financial need to posing as Nigerian princes offering exceptional returns on investments. Meta's communication aims to protect potential victims from the risks posed by such organized gangs.