How to Win Followers and Scamfluence People

As soon as possible Format Boy answers phone, I recognize his flourish. I spent weeks and weeks and weeks affected by the back catalog. The format guy is not like those who have other influences: it does not show his face and he does not tell me the real name. Not sending motivating content or looking for income brand transactions. Instead, teaching their audience how to orchestrate their highly salaried online scammers.

Format designs as a sole-style YouTube, Telegram, Instagramand XHe collected thousands of viewers and racked with hundreds of thousands of landscapes that played an informal adviser for a collective of West African scammers, known as Yahoo Boys.

Usually, these cybercriminals, mostly young men, from the wealthy aliens from their phones or laptops, some of the life-ending began to use face-burning and deep. Sent Yahoo Boys in the latest development Fake CNN broadcasts With the news created by Ai, designed to deceive people who blackmail people in their thinking in their thinking.

Yahoo Boys, often in Nigeria, are making perfect relationships with the victims of any cash they can do or in months. They are not the most technically advanced cheat, but they are agile and skilled social engineers. The United States lost millions in the Yahoo Boys in recent years in the UK and elsewhere, and many teenagers were reported to have their lives after blackmailing and sextorted.

Yahoo Boys, owned their terminology – help them help the cheats work (and potentially avoid social media moderation teams). The victims are called “customers”. “Bombing” covers hundreds of online score messaging to see someone answers. Scams are known as “formats” (therefore the name format boy). And there are formats for all occasions. Romance and dating formats are trying to fall in love with people; Police and FBI officials are imitated in accused scammers; Elon musk Formats look like centibillionaire. Investment scammers, gift card scammers, the list continues. Hundreds of scripts that can be copied and sacrificed directly, swimming around the internet. It is called “50 questions to ask your client as a yahoo height”.

Yahoo has a hustle culture that surrounds the boys. Pose with luxury cars and wear perfect jewelry. Hundreds of pages and groups in social media, often use Yahoo, “Yahoo” teaches the skills required for newcomers and provide you to your tools.

Format Boy is one of the most outstanding or most visible, or at least open, these “scamfluluencers” are recorded by cyberecurity researchers who often follow Yahoo Boys.

“I teach you exactly to call for fake videos in this video,” said Format Boy says the most popular YouTube video. Dramatic music games are designed on the screen as a doepfake video call. A short text banner is for this educational purposes only. The format is due to the fact that six of the most popular videos of the Neck, in fact, the detailed explanation of how Yahoo Boy is working in Yahoo Boy. “Fake video calls are very important,” says a voice record in the telegram. “Sometimes your customers can not leave you a data without seeing you physically without seeing you in the camera.”

Illustration: Manuel Cetin

Format Boy began working in 2019 using a cheap phone to spam potential victims on dating sites in 2019. From there, he had the work to teach people and selling them to programs, guides and tools. But on the phone with me, the format guy removes herself from fraud. “It’s not something I really do in person,” he says that at least a lot of practices are a claim that he repeats several times. “I would do it in a moment, but I finally stopped and started to do … I was edited by video and went to the AI ​​study,” he said.

He complains that in the last three years, each time he repeatedly removes the channels of resetting the audience again. When it is caught, it admits that the things he sent online can help people violate the law. “I will not lie to you. That’s the truth; it encourages them.” The most active in the telegram channel that he sent a message regularly and the audible notes – up to 15,000 subscribers to a few nine minutes. His posts, recommendations and suggestions for the AI ​​program where things can use to change the images of yahoo boys with “customer” with the “customer”. In a post, this Deepfake program has reduced a Valentine’s Day presentation offering 60,000 Nigeria Naira (about $ 38) to 15,000 ($ 9.50).