Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance. Now, we're often given scam warnings, but the truth is that it can happen to anyone. My next guest went into the criminal world after his own mother fell for a romance scammer. And this person went to Nigeria to track this person down.
Reporter and researcher for The New York Times and author of the upcoming book, The Yahoo Boys, Real Life with the Love Scammers of Lagos, Carlos Barragan. You're very welcome to the show.
Thank you so much, Claire, for having me.
Delighted to speak to you. It's an extraordinary story and a fascinating one.
Chapter 2: How did Carlos Barragan's mother fall for a romance scam?
But your own interest began very close to home when you realized that your mother had fallen for one of these people.
Yeah, exactly. My mom met an American soldier on Tinder back in 2015. And, you know, I'm very close to my mom. She was a single mom back then. I'm the youngest of three kids and I was 19 by then. And when things started getting very weird and this guy said that he wanted to send some gold bars to my home in Madrid, I started looking at, I started investigating whether this was real or not.
And I tracked the IP email address and the guy who was supposed to be in Syria, because he said he was an American soldier, Well, the guy was in Lagos, Nigeria. And for my mom, it was a big surprise because I think that by then she was already in love with this guy. And a long time passed. And during the pandemic, I saw my mom struggling with loneliness. And I kept thinking,
Who was the guy behind the scam? Why did he do it? How did he do it? And most importantly, why my mom, someone who I deeply admired, had fallen for it. So then I decided to go to Nigeria.
So can I ask you, when you went with that information to your mother and you said, look, this guy is in Lagos. He's not in Syria. Did she accept that?
Well, that is a good question because many victims struggle to accept that they've been talking to a scammer and it took hard evidence. So before showing the IP email address, I told her that this was a scam. I showed her news stories about scammers all over the world, in Nigeria, in Southeast Asia.
And she didn't believe it, you know, because she had already told so many things about herself, about her family. She had already pictured this man in her head. So it took hard evidence. And my mom said, oh, what a fool I am, because she saw it when I showed her the IP email address. So I guess that it took hard evidence to convince her.
Had she sent him any money?
No, because it was right when the guy was going to ask for money. They come up with so many excuses. He had passed like maybe a month or two during the scam and they waited. He waited for a month until my mom was really hooked to then come up with an excuse. They tell you they're going to send you money, gold bars or whatever. And then the next
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Chapter 3: What motivated Carlos to track down the scammer in Nigeria?
And he remembered thinking, what am I going to eat next? And then he met this Irish woman. He pretended to be a WWE superstar, the American... fights and he met this Irish woman and The first day he met her, she sent him 300 euros, which was a great amount for him. But in the long run, because he scammed her for at least three years, he made tens of thousands of euros from her.
And he spent it lavishly. He bought very fancy clothes, rings, etc. But also he would give away his money to the community. And the way they do it is just they go to hotels and just suddenly the whole community is looking at them because they irradiate power, reckless power.
Yeah, it's important to contextualize, though, what that money looks like in Nigeria. Like you're dealing with people who are earning less than or in or around 25 euro a month doing a job.
For example, Chiwuke, who was the guy who was scamming the Irish woman. He worked in a water factory, bagging bags of water before getting into the scam. And for one year and a half, he made less than the 300 euros he received from the Irish woman in one day. So the incentives are really hard.
And that's why there are more and more young men doing this, especially since the pandemic when inflation hit really hard in Nigeria.
And how are they viewed in the community, these scammers? Does everyone know what they're up to?
Yeah, like the word, they call themselves Yahoo boys because of the email service back in the early 2000s.
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Chapter 4: What evidence did Carlos present to convince his mother of the scam?
And the word Yahoo, and they pronounce it like that. It's very well known in Nigeria. And I think what I found most fascinating while researching for this book was that they have a very mixed view of the money that they are bringing and their activities. I found many of them, many of the elders think that this is ruining their image
you know, because there are also racist stereotypes about Nigerians being scammers. And, you know, it's important to know that this is just a small part of the country. But at the same time, there are other people who are like, well, they are bringing money to the country. And, you know, back in the day, the white people stole from us, they enslaved us. So it depends who you ask.
But at the same time, the community is facing, is receiving money in the short term, but in the long term is creating all sorts of tensions because all these young men suddenly, they don't want to work. They want to scam listeners because they can get more money and faster.
Is there a sense that if you're not doing this in this small area in Lagos, that you're a bit of a fool?
Yeah, a bit like that. And that's the problem. And, you know, I focus in just one neighborhood. But I remember talking to all the young men who were not doing it. And they would tell me when you are in a hotel, for example, I talked to a waiter in a hotel.
and he he told me how these yahoo boys would like throw money on the floor to them and they would treat them like if they were rubbish because you cannot compete with them in terms of the money they have and that applies to the people their girlfriends you know getting girlfriends or getting all the getting the attention from the community but at the same time the people who are not doing it they would tell me
well, God is on my side. I know that I'm doing right. I'm not hurting people. You know, it's important to know that a lot of Nigerians, they know the implications of what they are doing. But at the same time, if you want to hang out with the cool kids, you have to do that.
Yeah. And then there's a whole economy, I would imagine, around it as well. Like if you're selling the expensive drinks to these guys or if you're selling them the designer outfits, you don't want this business of scamming to end.
Right.
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