Our Reporter
An American investigator tracking cybercrime syndicates in Nigeria has revealed details regarding the integration of ritual practices – locally referred to as “Yahoo Plus”- by internet fraudsters operating in Lagos.
In an account documenting her field investigation in the commercial capital, the visitor detailed navigating high-risk environments and refuse dumps to locate hidden shrines where fraudsters allegedly obtain spiritual charms intended to manipulate victims overseas.
“On our trip to track down scammers in Lagos, Nigeria, we uncovered something shocking. We found out that ‘Yahoo Plus’ is a real thing and that some Yahoo Boys perform rituals and obtain charms to help them manipulate their victims. We even had to search through heaps of dirt and refuse to find the hideout where these charms were made.
The investigation confirmed that beyond conventional phishing and social engineering, there is a reliance on occult shrines, herbalists, and ritualists who prepare specialized charms designed to psychologically subdue targets.
The fraud operators utilize these charms alongside online manipulation tactics to fleece foreign victims, relying on belief in spiritual influence to guarantee successful financial extraction.”
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s Yahoo Boys have cheated millions of unsuspecting victims with advance-fee ‘419’ scams using Yahoo! email accounts. The ‘419’ refers to the section of Nigeria’s Criminal Code that deals with fraud and its related charges and penalties.
Research by Straightnews shows that 419 scammers usually contact victims, particularly foreigners, via email or social media, posing as wealthy individuals with business opportunities.
To claim the supposed reward, victims are asked to pay various fees upfront. Once the initial amount is paid, the scammer requests additional payments, often claiming complications or unexpected expenses. However, the victim never receives the promised reward, and the scammer disappears with the money.
As these more traditional cyber tricks have lost effectiveness due to increased awareness and enforcement by agencies like Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), scammers are resorting to more extreme measures.
.Scammers use spiritual and supernatural elements and mystical rituals, believing these will enhance their criminal success
Scammers have begun incorporating spiritual and supernatural elements and mystical rituals rooted in Nigerian culture, known as cyber-spiritualism, into their modus operandi, believing these will enhance their criminal success. ‘Yahoo Plus’ combines typical scams – like business email compromise, phishing and romance fraud – with voodoo and occult practices.
Rituals involving items like used sanitary pads are believed to protect scammers from detection, and increase their success and wealth. An even darker form, ‘Yahoo Plus Plus’, involves human sacrifices, rituals, kidnapping, harvesting body parts and ‘sex with ghosts’ to achieve their aims.
A witch doctor tells the scammers what fresh body part(s) he needs, depending on the scam, for the black magic potion. The scammer must hunt for the body part(s) and mix these into the prepared potion. Sunday said he’d heard that for business espionage and sabotaging data in large computer networks, two left eyes and a young woman’s left breast (she can’t be older than 25) were needed.
For the required body parts, scammers often seek out homeless girls looking for job opportunities, as they’re unlikely to be missed. Sunday, who denies any involvement in Yahoo Plus Plus, explains that scammers use spells from witch doctors to lure victims to specific locations, where they’re kidnapped, drugged and killed, and their organs harvested for rituals.
Scammers have even been known to use their own girlfriends. Even though there has been a clampdown on witch doctors, there seem to be limited police investigations into the missing girls, partly due to low reporting rates by families or friends.
