Members of the infamous “Yahoo Yahoo boys” were among the 300 people who had been arrested by Nigerian and US authorities in a months-long global crackdown on online scams to hijack wire transfers from companies and individuals.
“Operation reWired” busted multiple groups composed mostly of transnational criminal gangs who were responsible for what is called business email compromise (BEC) schemes where the suspects stole money being used in payments.
In a report by Agence France-Presse, US Justice Department said that the schemes originated in Nigeria and spread worldwide, leading to some $1.3 billion in losses reported worldwide in 2018.
The operations conducted by Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) from May to September, focused on dismantling the most significant cyber criminal enterprises, said FBI legal attache Ahamdi Uche in a joint press conference in Lagos.
The operation led to 167 people arrested in Nigeria, 74 in the United States, many of them Nigerian nationals, 18 in Turkey and 15 in Ghana, the report said.
A total of 281 persons were arrested and $3.7 milllion were seized in separate operations in France, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Britain and Kenya.
EFCC’s director of information, Mohammed Abba, said in the report that the operations in Nigeria yielded tremendous successes against the “Yahoo Yahoo boys,” a nickname given to Nigerian Yahoo mail fraudsters.
“We have also recovered from the arrested fraudsters the sum of $169,850 (153,000 euros) as well as the sum of 92 million naira (230,000 euros),” Abba said.
