The Bifurcation of the Nigerian Cybercriminals: Narratives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Agents

Abstract

While this article sets out to advance our knowledge about the characteristics of Nigerian cybercriminals (Yahoo-Boys), it is also the first study to explore the narratives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) officers concerning them. It appraises symbolic interactionist insights to consider the ways in which contextual factors and worldview may help to illuminate officers’ narratives of cybercriminals and the interpretations and implications of such accounts. Semi-structured interviews of forty frontline EFCC officers formed the empirical basis of this study and were subjected to a directed approach of qualitative content analysis. While prior studies, for example, indicated that only a group of cybercriminals deploy spiritual and magical powers to defraud victims (i.e. modus operandi), our data analysis extended this classification into more refined levels involving multiple features. In particular, analysis bifurcates cybercriminals and their operations based on three factors: educational-attainment, modus-operandi, and networks-collaborators. Results also suggest that these cybercriminals and their operations are embedded in “masculinity-and-material-wealth”. These contributions thus have implications for a range of generally accepted viewpoints about these cybercriminals previously taken-for-granted. Since these criminals have victims all over the world, insights from our study may help various local and international agencies [a] to understand the actions/features of these two groups of cybercriminals better and develop more effective response strategies; and [b] to appreciate the vulnerabilities of their victims better and develop more adequate support schemes. We also consider the limitations of social control agents’ narratives on criminals.

Full text

Cite as
Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
1
The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents.
THIS COPY IS THE FINAL DRAFT VERSION. However, the Version of Record can be
found: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2019.04.009
Cite article as:
Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals:
Narratives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and
Informatics, 40, 14-26.
Abstract: -
While this article sets out to advance our knowledge about the characteristics of Nigerian
cybercriminals (Yahoo-Boys), it is also the first study to explore the narratives of the Economic
and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) officers concerning them. It appraises symbolic
interactionist insights to consider the ways in which contextual factors and worldview may help
to illuminate officers’ narratives of cybercriminals and the interpretations and implications of
such accounts. Semi-structured interviews of forty frontline EFCC officers formed the empirical
basis of this study and were subjected to a directed approach of qualitative content analysis.
While prior studies, for example, indicated that only a group of cybercriminals deploy spiritual
and magical powers to defraud victims (i.e. modus operandi), our data analysis extended this
classification into more refined levels involving multiple features. In particular, analysis
bifurcates cybercriminals and their operations based on three factors: [a] educational-attainment,
[b] modus-operandi, and [c] networks-collaborators. Results also suggest that these
cybercriminals and their operations are embedded in “masculinity-and-material-wealth”. These
contributions thus have implications for a range of generally accepted viewpoints about these
cybercriminals previously taken-for-granted. Since these criminals have victims all over the
world, insights from our study may help various local and international agencies [a] to
understand the actions/features of these two groups of cybercriminals better and develop more
effective response strategies. [b] to appreciate the vulnerabilities of their victims better and
develop more adequate support schemes. We also consider the limitations of social control
agents’ narratives on criminals.

Cite as
Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
2
1. Introduction
“I went to Nigeria to meet the man who scammed me
1
”
In Nigeria, over 77% of youths live on less than USD2 per day (African Development
Bank, 2018), and online and offline lives are inextricably intertwined (Lazarus, 2019a;
Lazarus 2019b; Powell et al., 2018). Even though the link between offending and
poverty is far from straightforward (Newburn, 2016), unemployment and poverty
have strong connections with online crimes “within a given nation” (Kigerl, 2012, p.
483). What is notable is that the Nigerian youths have been disproportionately
implicated in defrauding victims all over the world (Akanle et al., 2016). Internet
crimes are global issues (Kirillova et al., 2017; Wall, 2007; Yar, 2017), and millions of
people with email accounts have undoubtedly encountered Nigerian scam emails
(Rich, 2017). Consequently, recent years have witnessed an upsurge of research on
victims of cyber-fraud that supposedly originates from Nigeria (Cross et al., 2018;
Owen et al., 2017; Sorell and Whitty, 2019). We still, however, know very little about
Nigerian cyber-fraudsters (Lazarus, 2018). Remarkably, no study has attempted to
explore the narratives of officers who have close interactions with these
cybercriminals, even though frontline law enforcement officers who routinely
investigate, arrest, interview, interrogate and prosecute these cyber- fraudsters have
insiders’ insights. The narratives of these frontline law enforcement officers,
1
“I went to Nigeria to meet the man who scammed me”, retrieved:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-37632259

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
3
therefore, merit examination. This study asks: “what are the narratives of frontline
law enforcement officers about cyber-fraudsters and their activities in Nigeria?”.
This contextual inquiry concerns the Nigerian cybercriminals, the narratives of law
enforcement agents on the ground about these cybercriminals, and the implications
of these narratives. A primary objective of this study is to shed light on the
characteristics of the Nigerian cyber-fraudsters. Doing so is prompted by a central
motive: to enlighten government agencies around the world about these
cybercriminals so that they are in a better position to: [a] understand the
actions/features of these cybercriminals better and develop more effective response
strategies; and [b] appreciate the vulnerabilities of their victims better and develop
more adequate support schemes. The study examines life on the ground in Nigeria
and Nigerian law enforcement officers’ own thoughts about cyber-fraud and
cybercriminals. Since situations must be understood from the inside, this article sets
out to explore the narratives of people (social actors) regarding their fellow men and
women, which are the most meaningful within their particular cultural dynamics.
Since cyber-frauds are social products, they must also be read, in Hayward and
Young’s (2004, p. 259) words, “in terms of the meanings they carry.” This article
assesses the connections between the indigenous worldview and cyber-fraud
activities, looking for, in Swidler’s (1990) term, the empirical traces of “culture in
action.” In particular, it harnesses law enforcement officers’ narratives on
cybercriminals and their activities to shed light on how indigenous worldviews may
be connected with offending in the virtual world. Henceforth, the article is presented
in five sections [i.e. section 2 to 6]: Firstly, the literature review (section 2) attempts to
position the research topic within the existing literature by providing an overview of

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
4
what we currently know, which helps to shed light on the phenomenon we are
investigating. The literature review is followed by a theoretical background (i.e.
section 3), which provides a lens from which to analyse, interpret and discuss data.
The article then presents the remaining three sections in the following order: method
(section 4), findings/discussion (section 5) and conclusion (section 6).
2. Literature review
2.1. Indigenous worldviews on wealth acquisition
Contexts are the resources for understanding “the ways in which local worldviews
on wealth acquisition give rise to contemporary manifestations of spirituality in
cyberspace” (Lazarus, 2019a, p.1). Indigenous spiritual worldviews are central to the
discussion of wealth acquisition and the meaning of such wealth within the
particular cultural dynamics from which they have emerged (Akanle and Adejare,
2018; Ellis, 2016). Many Nigerians “feed on the red blood corpuscles of the primal
world and spiritual shrines” to generate material wealth (Kalu, 2002, p. 674; see also
Ekeh, 1975). In this respect, “the intersectionality of the spiritual world and the
acquisition of wealth” discussed in Lazarus’s (2019a) recent work is revealing. While
some Nigerians tap into religious resources for wealth accumulation, it is a
misconception to group all such people into just one group (Lazarus, 2019a). Indeed,
there is a distinction between benevolent and malevolent intentionality and,
consequently, tapping into religious resources for wealth accumulation could be
“licit or illicit” (Lazarus, 2019a, p.12). Either way, spirituality is a “critical factor in
the activities of the criminals involved in organized and non-organized crimes”

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
5
(Melvin and Ayotunde, 2010, p. 364). Life in the virtual world embodies cultural
nuances in society (Jones, 2018; Powell et al., 2018). Thus, Lazarus (2019a), by
specifically exploring the occult economy in a variety of different manifestations,
concluded that the physical world concurrently extends into the virtual world as far
as the generation of wealth is concerned. The occult economy can be defined as the
deployment, real or imagined, of spiritual/magical means for material ends
(Comaroff and Comaroff, 1999). Given that earthly riches are believed by some
Nigerians to have a spiritual aetiology (Ekeh, 1975; Ellis, 2016; Kalu, 2002; Lazarus,
2019a), this worldview has consequences for many Nigerian institutions.
Traditional shrines, churches, mosques, and many religious institutions generally
serve as lubricants of commercial relationships’ between spiritualist and many
ordinary Nigerians (Ellis, 2016). In this way, the spiritual world maintains its efficacy
as the true source of wealth and its cultural potency is continuously legitimized,
produced, and reproduced through interactional processes between ordinary
citizens and the spiritualists (Lazarus, 2019a). Through these processes, a client–
patron relationship between the gate-keepers of the shrines and sacred sites and
ordinary citizens is negotiated and nurtured (Ekeh, 1975; Ellis, 2016). In turn, the
cultural and symbolic “handshaking” between clients and patrons not only helps to
harness this type of relationship, but it also blurs the boundary between the meaning
of “bribe” and that of “dash” (Lazarus, 2019a). “Dash” is a local term for a gift in a
Nigerian context. The exchanges of “dashes” between the representatives of many
institutions, such as banks and ordinary Nigerians, including cybercriminals, are
commonplace (e.g. Aransiola and Asindemade, 2011; Ibrahim, 2017). The underlying
factor is that, while bribery and corruption are symptoms and outcomes of

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
6
institutional deficiency (Dasgupta and Ugur, 2011), expertise in bribery has been
culturally deemed necessary, and sufficient, for holders of public posts to be
successful in Nigeria (Ellis, 2016). These money-oriented social/cultural processes in
Nigerian society extend to cyberspace and, consequently, have implications for this
article’s positioning.
2.2. Cybercrime and cultural relativism
Many scholars (Bae, 2017; Donner et al., 2015; Hutchings and Chua, 2017; Ibrahim,
2016; Lazarus, 2019b; Selwyn, 2008; Yar, 2017) have observed that the term
“cybercrime” is an umbrella term for a wide spectrum of crimes, such as revenge
pornography, cyber-stalking, cyber-bullying, cyber-espionage, and cyber-fraud. For
Wall (2007, p. 185), for example “cybercrimes are the product of networked
computers, [and] must be defined in terms of the informational, networked, and
globalised transformation of deviant or criminal behaviour by net- worked
technologies”. However, ‘a computer may be materially the same, but placed in
different cultures, a computer holds different meanings and generates different
problems shaped by cultural factors in which the computer sits’ (Jones, 2018 p. 18).
To search for empirical clues of “culture in action” (Swidler, 1990), therefore, this
study mobilizes marginal literature about the cultural dynamics of Nigerian cyber-
fraudsters, as Cross’s (2018) literature review suggested. The above author
elaborated that the narratives of current cyber- fraud research are only reflective of
the mainstream perspectives at the expense of the marginalised voices. In other
words, the voices of scholars from the global South especially Nigeria, are ignored,

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
7
and by implication, the narratives of scholars from the global North exclusively
inform the global cyber-fraud discourse. A better understanding of this phenomenon
lies in our capacity to unconditionally value all insights across the global South and
global North (Lazarus, 2018, Lazarus, 2019a). For example, “listed in the prevalence
of cybercrime perpetrators, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and the United States are
at the top of the FBI’s league-table” (Ibrahim, 2016, p.44). However, a critical analysis
of the FBI’s league-table has pointed out that the statistics the FBI relied upon to inform
the state of cybercrime perpetrators across nations, even when they represent the
underlying reality, are socially and selectively constructed (Ibrahim, 2016, pp. 50–
52). Nigeria, arguably, is not less significant than nations from the global North.
While what constitutes cybercrime issues in most Western nations such as the UK
and the US may involve many aforementioned types of cybercrime, the meaning of
cybercrime in Nigeria is fundamentally rooted in socio-economics (Ibrahim, 2016).
Therefore, in critiquing the dominant cybercrime classifications, Ibrahim (2016, p.
55), despite lacking primary empirical data, argued that “the conceptual ‘pipelines’
of the cybercrime in the Global North may not hold water in Nigeria” (see also sets
of primary empirical data on the topic e.g., Ibrahim 2017; Lazarus 2018).
Thus, as Cross’s (2018) work pointed out, the inclusion of Nigerian scholars’
narratives is central and necessary to discussions about cyber-fraud, not least
because they provide invaluable layers of explanation regarding the cultural
dimensions of cyber-fraudsters. One way to rectify this type of omission is to
mobilise literature about Nigerian culture that interacts with cyber-fraud presently

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
8
missing in the mainstream narratives (e.g. the lens of “digital spiritualization”,
Lazarus, 2019a, p. 3–5). Such aspects of Nigerian culture are “critical to building a
more effective and holistic approach to target online fraud, not only within Nigeria
but worldwide” (Cross, 2018, p. 261). Based on the preceding insights, this article
relies on marginal voices more than the broader body of research on cybercriminals.
While one might be inclined to suggest that a broader canon of cyber- fraud (e.g.
Button and Cross, 2017; Howard, 2009; Schoepfer et al., 2017) is needed in research
on the cultural accounts of the agency of social control on cybercriminals, our
strategy is based on the principles of cultural relativism. This strategy connects with
the belief that one cannot impose meanings on another culture or context as each
situation must be understood from the inside (Beirne, 1983; Ribbens McCarthy and
Gillies, 2018). This strategy also connects with the belief that there are no “universal”
“truths” about the contextual contours of digital crimes such as cyber-fraud
(Ibrahim, 2016; Lazarus, 2019a). Accordingly, this current study goes in searches of
“local truths” about cybercriminals through the lens of law enforcement officers on
the ground in Nigeria.
Monetary benefits are central to the meaning of cybercrime in Nigeria, popularly
referred to as “419 fraud” (e.g. Ibrahim, 2016; Igwe, 2007); historically, 419 is derived
from section 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code dealing with fraud. Though there
are many types of cyber-fraud (Button and Cross, 2017; Schoepfer et al., 2017), here
we examine multiple variations of Advance Fee Fraud (AFF) or 419 (Igwe, 2007;
Rich, 2017; Whitaker, 2013). AFF is a confidence trick in which victims (e.g. victims

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
9
of romance scams) are deceived into advancing relatively small sums of money in
the hope of realizing a much larger gain (Chang, 2008; Rich, 2017; Whitaker, 2013).
This form of fraud (AFF or 419) is embedded in Nigerian history because they are
social products and the term is directly coined from section 419 of the code. The
online versions of AFF are locally known as “Yahoo-Yahoo” (e.g. Adeniran, 2011).
The term “Yahoo-Yahoo” was coined based on the dominance of Yahoo emails,
apps, and instant messaging in perpetrator–victim communications in the mid-2000s
(Lazarus, 2018; Trend Micro and INTERPOL, 2017) during the Internet boom in
Nigeria. The perpetrators of “Yahoo-Yahoo” were hence popularly called “Yahoo-
boys” (Aransiola and Asindemade, 2011; Tade & Aliyu 2011).
2.3. Yahoo-boys and cultural cues
The term “Yahoo-boys” signifies that the perpetrators of the infamous “Yahoo-
Yahoo” are predominantly male (Lazarus, 2018, p. 67). The use of emails served as
the initial communication phase for some Yahoo-boys, and many victims have been
deceived and defrauded all over the world (EFCC, 2018; Whitaker, 2013). Rich’s
(2017) comprehensive content analysis of a large corpus of AFF emails is revealing
(see also Chang, 2008). These researchers observed that authors of AFF emails
commonly use a “trust rhetoric” (e.g. Rich, 2017) and “authoritative and urgent”
language (e.g. Chang, 2008) to defraud their victims. This body of research (e.g.
Adogame, 2009; Chang, 2008; Rich, 2017) sheds light on cyber-fraudsters and their
art of persuasive language. However, in recent years, “Yahoo- Yahoo” has shifted
from merely sending multiple emails to unsolicited recipients to the targeting and

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
10
befriending of victims on dating websites or Facebook (EFCC, 2018). While Yahoo-
boys generally prefer victims from foreign nations with high currency value (Akanle
et al., 2016), remarkably, most victims of Yahoo-boys are swindled in the context of
“love” and “friendship” with charms and magic (Lazarus, 2019a). Because “love”
and “friendship” are specific aspects of “Yahoo-Yahoo” narratives (Lazarus, 2018),
victims’ plights are not only financial but also psychological (Cross et al., 2018;
Ibrahim, 2016; Sorell and Whitty, 2019). Yahoo-boys control their “clients” (victims)
with various spiritual means, such as invoking of spells on victims’ photographs in
shrines and communicating with them through words-of-power (locally known as
“do as I say”) on the telephone (Lazarus, 2019a). “Do as I say” spells or “words-of-
power [can] unlock cosmic forces that can make the spiritual manifest into the
physical” and, in this way, spells can be invoked or undone by words-of-power
(Peavy, 2016, p. 101). While it may be critical to investigate the symbolic roles of love
potions and the mystical powers that can make the spiritual manifest into the
physical, there is a dearth of research on Yahoo-boys and the occult economy.
Accordingly, some interview studies refer to cybercriminals who defraud their
victims with supernatural powers as “Yahoo-boys plus” (e.g. Melvin and Ayotunde,
2010; Tade, 2013). These prior studies (e.g. Melvin and Ayotunde, 2010) noted that
only a group of cybercriminals make use of magic/spiritual powers to defraud
victims, whereas no study has extended this implicit classification beyond this
method of operation. This article sets out to fill this gap. The bottom line is that like
some law-abiding Nigerians, the cybercriminals (Yahoo-boys) find the use of
magical powers meaningful (Lazarus, 2019a) as exemplified in popular music. A
recent study, which is the first to examine the representations of cybercriminals (and

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
11
cyber-fraud) in Nigerian hip-hop music suggests that cyber-fraud embodies the
occult economy (Lazarus, 2018). Nowhere is the link between the occult economy
and Nigerian hip-hop music more evident than in Kelly Handsome’s song which
depicted Yahoo-boys as follows:
“…Maga don pay/Mugu don pay/shout hallelujah…/…hallelujah
owo…/…/…hallelujah ego…/… hallelujah, hallelujah kudi, kudi../I don suffer, but I
now don hammer, papa God don bless me, no one can change it…/…
(“The gullible has paid, the senseless has remitted/ shout hallelujah…/…hallelujah,
hallelujah money…/…hallelujah, hallelujah money…./…/ hallelujah, hallelujah
money, money…I have suffered a lot, but now I have hit the jackpot, Almighty God
has blessed me, [and] no one can change it”)” (Lazarus, 2018, p. 73).
The above song attributes the acquisition of wealth to “real or imagined” spiritual
powers, but that is not all. While this prior study (i.e. Lazarus, 2018) noted that
cybercriminals and musicians are connected, it has homogenised these
cybercriminals as a single group. Bearing this in mind, this current study aims to
bifurcate the characteristics of these criminals beyond the use of magical powers.
Nonetheless, it is also remarkable that this type of lyrical representation shows that
Yahoo-boys glamorize cyber-fraud.
So, while some researchers implicated poverty and/or unemployment as the causes
of cyber-fraud among Nigerian youths (e.g. Adesina, 2017; Akanle et al., 2016), other

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
12
researchers have pointed out that conspicuous consumption (Ibrahim, 2017;
Ojedokun and Eraye, 2012) and masculinity or “doing gender” (e.g. Lazarus, 2019b;
Smith, 2017) are also fundamental to the discussion of “Yahoo- Yahoo.” Since
“Yahoo-Yahoo” is primarily motivated by monetary rewards and most Yahoo-boys
implicated in such crimes have no employment records (EFCC, 2018), it is reasonable
therefore to concede that crime may be one of the Yahoo-boys’ ways of “doing
gender, when legitimate means of demonstrating their masculinity are denied”
(Lazarus, 2019b, p.10; see also Messerschmidt, 1993; West and Zimmerman, 1987).
For symbolic interactionists (Carter and Fuller, 2016; West and Zimmerman, 1987),
the concept of “doing gender” demonstrates the socially constructed nature of
masculinity as developing out of repeated, patterned interaction and socialization
processes.
Accordingly, cultural expectations of masculinity and femininity “perpetuate
heterosexual male-domination over women” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005,
p.832) and, in Nigeria, men (and boys) are socialised to be sole bread-winners and
the principal head of the household (Eboiyehi et al., 2016; Ibrahim, 2015; Smith,
2017), which increases their financial responsibilities as Lazarus (2019b) noted. On
the flipside, women’s possession of high economic power can have detrimental
effects on their marriages and their chances of remarriage in Nigeria (Lazarus et al.,
2017). Indeed, gender is a central source of social disadvantages that positions these
women between exclusion and belonging (Lazarus, 2019b). “In virtually every arena
of Nigerian men’s lives, money’s value is closely tied to the social work that it does
in men’s relationships with women” (Smith, 2017, p. 160). Since gender-category
membership is attached to the cultural expectations and performativity (Connell and

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
13
Messerschmidt 2005; West and Zimmerman 1987), in this context, “men’s cultural
positionality in society influences them to be generally more ‘desperate’ to achieve
financial success than women online” by any means possible such as cyber-fraud
(Ibrahim, 2016, p.54). So, the meaning “wealth” has for men in relation to women
may be related to the predomination of young men being involved in “Yahoo-
Yahoo.” Cultural contexts in Nigeria “serve as a resource for understanding gender
and crime connections, and offer additional layers of explanation” (Lazarus, 2019b,
p.10). These cultural forces resonate with the view that gender is constructed
through interaction and that men and women are culturally assessed for their
gender performances in both interactional and institutional contexts (Carter and
Fuller, 2015; West and Zimmerman, 1987). Closely related to the above are the
expectations of people in tertiary institutions and the associated consequences.
Dominant perspectives further suggest that education increases the returns to
legitimate work, and legitimate work generally raises the opportunity costs of
offending (e.g. Lochner, 2004; Machin et al., 2011). However, university education
does not by itself provide an automatic ticket to conventional employment or
economic stability in Nigeria (Ibrahim, 2016). Even if a graduate secures legitimate
employment, many conventional occupations leave workers vulnerable to financial
predicaments that imperil their capacity to provide for themselves and their
dependents (Smith, 2017). In these contexts, research on cybercriminals in
universities has demonstrated that young adult male Nigerians, mainly university
students/graduates, constitute the bulk of cyber-fraudsters (Aransiola and
Asindemade, 2011; Ojedokun and Eraye, 2012; Tade, 2013; Tade and Aliyu, 2011).
While one may be inclined to point out that the selective sample of these studies (i.e.

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
14
solely university students) may have shaped their findings, Ibrahim’s (2017)
interview study, which explored the views of 17 Nigerian parents, agreed with the
above authors. A more critical issue is that as Helfgott (2013) and Payne (2018)
noted, researchers value using a categorisation approach to studying crime and
criminals. Such an approach, for example, helps to map out 'links between different
types of behaviors within specific crime categories' (Payne, 2018, p.18). “Knowing
the social and situational-contextual factors that distinguish particular categories of
criminals is crucial to theoretical understanding and policy practice” (Helfgott, 2013,
p.21). However, no study has considered classifying the Nigerian cybercriminals on
the basis of critical themes in literature such as musicians-cybercriminals linkages
and university education. To fill this gap (and extend the existing classification
beyond the issue of spirituality as previously mentioned), it is critical to explore the
narratives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) frontline
agents. As far as this current study is concerned, no study has sought the narratives
of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) frontline agents (or law
enforcement officers for that matter) regarding Yahoo-boys.
2.4. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)
The EFCC was established in 2002 primarily to deal with all “corruption issues” in
Nigeria (Obuah, 2010; Pierce, 2016), as corruption is a complex social, political, and
economic phenomenon that affects all countries (UNODC, 2017). Some researchers
claim that, in Nigerian society, political impunity, bribery, and corruption have
created a social environment in which fraudulent practices are normative for

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
15
ordinary Nigerians (Pierce, 2016; Smith, 2008). Therefore, the EFCC was established
to serve as a national coordinator for investigating money laundering and other
economic crimes (Obuah, 2010; Pierce, 2016; Umar et al. 2016). Regional policy
responses to crime problems are the concerns of international communities
(Newburn and Sparks, 2004) and the concerns of international communities in
particular played a role in motivating the Nigerian government to set up the EFCC
(Obuah, 2010; Umar et al. 2016) and update its laws. Nigeria enacted the 2015
Cybercrime Act to “provide an efficient and unified legal, regulatory and
institutional framework for the prohibition, prevention, detection, prosecution and
punishment of cybercrime in Nigeria” (Cybercrime Act, 2015).
The EFCC is the law enforcement agency that investigates and prosecutes financial
and economic crimes such as AFF, corrupt practices, illegal bunkering, tax evasion,
and all aspects of money laundering in Nigeria (UNODC, 2017). No human
organization is perfect, however, and there are often corrupt officials within law
enforcement institutions (Reiner, 2010). For example, some re- searchers have
implicated prominent politicians in using the EFCC as tools to oppress and
intimidate their political opponents (e.g. Adeniran, 2011). Despite such challenges,
the EFCC has been acknowledged in general academic research (Pierce, 2016; Umar
et al. 2016) and media discourse (The Nation, 2017) as having had substantial
achievements and “zero tolerance for corruption and fraud.” In 2017, it was reported
that the agency had secured 340 convictions in six months and recovered millions of
dollars (e.g. The Nation, 2017). Also, until the creation of the EFCC, law enforcement
in Nigeria had been exclusively focused on crimes of the powerless, such as the
youth, rather than the powerful, such as corrupt bankers (Pierce, 2016). Indeed, “the

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16
creation of the EFCC in Nigeria marked a significant shift from rhetoric about
fighting corruption, fraud and money laundering to actually fighting these
types of crimes” (Obuah, 2010, p. 24). Since the EFCC is the principal law enforcer
of 419 fraud/AFF, the narratives of the frontline EFCC agents will, in Polkinghorne’s
(1988, p. 19) words, “serve as a lens through which the apparently independent and
disconnected elements [of cyber-fraudsters] may be seen as related parts of a
whole” (see also Longo, 2015). While many studies have benefited from the
interactionist perspective, as Carter and Fuller (2015) noted, no study on
cybercrime has used the interactionist perspective in a Nigerian context as far as
this research is concerned. This study goes in search of the empirical traces of
“culture in action” (Swidler, 1990). Consequently, it will benefit from the symbolic
interactionist basic premises, based on the above discussions (e.g. masculinity, occult
economies, and local worldviews).
3. Theoretical background
This study will benefit from the symbolic interactionism position, which rests on the
three premises of Blumer’s (1969b/1998, p. 2) original formulation. The first premise
is that the meanings that the things and social objects (persons) have for people are
the basis of their actions. The second premise is that these meanings are derived
from social interactions. The third premise is that these meanings are modified in the
process of interaction of individuals over time. There is no objective viewpoint for
the critique or compliment of an “immoral” act (Becker, 1967/1997; Reiner, 2016).
Indeed, ‘people’s experience of the world is always mediated by culturally defined

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Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
17
meanings, which, although adopted by their personal experience, condition how and
what they conceive as reality in their narratives’ (according to symbolic interactionist
perspectives) (Longo, 2015). Arguably insights from symbolic interactionist
perspectives will be useful to make sense of the narratives of officers regarding
cyber-fraudsters (fellow Nigerians).
4. Methods
4.1. Participant description and interview data
This study sought the views of EFCC officers concerning Nigerian cyber-fraudsters
(Yahoo-boys) and their operations. To explore the narratives of law enforcement
officers regarding Yahoo-boys, 40 EFCC officers (70% male and 30% female) from
two Nigerian cities (Abuja & Lagos) were recruited. While many agents of state
apparatus have been implicated in corrupt practices (Ibrahim, 2017), EFCC officers
strive to draw a clear line between the agency and corrupt institutions in Nigeria
(Umar et al., 2016). In this context, EFCC officers, if interviewed by “outsiders”
outside the agency, could, for example, easily be accused for “passing sensitive
information to outsiders” for material gains. This explains why, to date, to the best of
our knowledge, no one has been able to access this “hard-to-reach data.” However,
we circumvented this practical problem by adopting an innovative strategy.
Because one of the authors is an EFCC officer as well as a researcher, the authors
were able to access the “impossible” data set. The involvement of the officer as a
researcher (i.e., “insider-researcher”) facilitated access negotiations with other

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18
gatekeepers and helped the research team to develop a high level of rapport with the
interviewees. The establishment of rapport between a respondent and the
interviewer, or lack thereof, is a critical aspect of the interviewer gaining the
respondents’ cooperation to complete a meaningful interview. Also, because the
interviewer and interviewees were members of the agency (EFCC), they were able to
harness a deep, in a Weberian term, “verstehen” (understanding) of their roles while
having open and engaged discussions on topics that may not have been otherwise
possible. While interviews are products of social encounters involving co-
construction, mutual agreement, and trust (Morris, 2018; Ribbens, 1989), the
“insider-researcher” emphasized confidentiality/anonymity and informed fellow
officers that the study was to gather data for academic research on the subject.
To increase the level of rapport between the interviewer and the interviewees in this
study, the “insider-researcher” recruited and individually interviewed fellow
officers (70 to 80 minutes each). All officers were interviewed in the EFCC
headquarters in Abuja, with the officers based in Lagos being interviewed during
their various assignments in the headquarters. Involvement in the study was
formalized through the obtaining of the interviewees’ consents for the interview.
Officers (interviewees) were asked about their experiences with offenders,
particularly the cybercriminals' characteristics. The importance of sharing their
thoughts about cyber- criminals with a fellow officer who was also a researcher
appears to have encouraged the participants to consent to the interviews. Gathering
data from law enforcement officers about criminals is consistent with prior research
such as Hutchings and Chua’s (2017) study which interviewed Australian police
officers. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were used, and all interviews were

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19
tape- recorded and transcribed verbatim. The selection criteria were that the officers
had at least four years of work experience as a frontline law enforcement agent and
at least a university degree.
These officers were considered to be appropriate interviewees for our study because
they had worked on a significant number of cases regarding cyber-fraudsters
according to EFCC’s (2018) records. Participants ranged in age from 27 years to 52
years, and their work experience ranged from five to 14 years. A total of 26 frontline
investigators and 14 frontline prosecuting lawyers were interviewed between
September 2017 and January 2018. While the investigating officers routinely
interview complainants and suspects, including Yahoo-boys, they also interrogate
them when necessary. Additionally, they give testimony in court for the prosecuting
counsel (lawyers). The lawyers (prosecutors) are responsible for crime-data synthesis
and prosecuting EFCC cases, including cyber-fraud. The reason for their inclusion
was that lawyers’ courtroom experience in cyber-fraud cases might complement that
of the investigators in generating a rich data set. Enhanced by in-group trust and
rapport, the interviewees, due to the role that the “insider-researcher” played as the
interviewer and an EFCC officer, provided significant insights into the topic. Given
that our data would have been almost “impossible” to reach without the
interviewer’s in-group membership, we believe that the data we present in this
study is priceless. Data was subjected to the principles of a directed approach to
qualitative content analysis (DAQCA) (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005).
4.2. Identification of themes and coding of data

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20
In line with DAQCA (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005), data were coded and analyzed as
follows. First, coding began with reading the transcripts and highlighting all text
that, on first impression, appeared to represent critical aspects of the materials
gathered. The next step in the analysis was to code all the highlighted passages
using predetermined codes, because “the goal of a directed approach to content
analysis is to validate prior research or theory” (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005, p.1281).
So, we derived the sensitising concepts from the main themes of the literature
review: [1] “socio-demographic and gender,” [2] “spiritual dimension of cyber-
fraud”, [3] “university students/graduates,” and [4] “popular music and cyber-fraud
connections”. These themes served as an initial and sub- sequent framework to
highlight and recognise themes from the data, as suggested by Hsieh and Shannon
(2005). While the above four themes identified in the literature were the high-level
codes we used, these themes intertwined with our empirical data. Because different
coders may vary in their interpretation of the text’s content, inter-coder reliability is
essential (Hruschka et al., 2004; Hsieh and Shannon, 2005). Accordingly, two
researchers independently coded the data. While one researcher coded the whole
data, the other (i.e. insider-researcher) reviewed 30% of the data set with the same
codes from the literature review (previously mentioned). The degree of similarities
between both coders was 98%. It is conceivable that DAQCA has some inherent
limitations in that re- searchers have approached the data with an informed but
unintended bias to some extent. The researchers, however, “tested” to see if these
themes outlined in the literature and background information appeared as expected.
Also, most respondents (n = 34) went straight to the main themes in the existing
literature such as “male domination of cybercrime,” in their first response without
further probing questions. The following is an example of the first interview
question: Interviewer: “My first question is, based on your experience as a law

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21
enforcement officer, how do you describe or define the main perpetrators of
cybercrime in Nigeria?” Respondent (over five years of experience): “Oh, you mean
the boys that normally go to the Internet to defraud people?”
This type of dialogue suggests that the core limitation of a DAQCA did not have a
substantial negative effect on the findings. All direct quotes presented below
represent widely shared beliefs of the social control agents interviewed involving the
following findings: social-demographic features; the bifurcation of Yahoo-boys; and
masculinity and material wealth. These are discussed sequentially below.
5. Findings and discussions
5.1. Socio-demographic features
All interviewees (n = 40) reported that Yahoo-boys are predominantly young male
university students and graduates. However, 30 participants reported that the socio-
demographic features of these cyber-fraudsters are diverse and include people from
affluent, poor, Christian, and Muslims backgrounds. For example, in the words of
one prosecutor (over 10 years of experience):
“I can say concerning the perpetrators of cybercrime really, I think there are certain
stereotypes that are there, which may not necessarily be the truth. We expect that
every Yahoo-boy is that somebody [paused], even the idea that you call him a

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Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
22
Yahoo-boys paints an image in your mind that he is a young man, university
educated, conversant with the computer and internet, but it is not normally the
case... based on my experience as a law enforcement agent, I can say that regardless
of economic background or tribe or religion and all that, any ye-ye person [good-for-
nothing person] who wants to make it fast in Nigeria goes into internet fraud.
Number one, the internet gives anonymity, and low risks. You know, because no
police or army checkpoints are online [because no perfect security online]. Secondly,
the Internet is a flow, no boundary. It gives you access to people [victims] in real
time, quick, quick ... there’s no barrier online, and for example, they don’t need a
visa to talk to somebody in the UK.”
Figure. 1. The bifurcation of Yahoo-boys with indications of proportionality.

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23
Notably, the last sentence is reminiscent of Wall’s (2007, p. 185) observation that life
online has the capacity for distributing “peer to peer networking and a panoptic
gaze that creates an asymmetric ability to enable one person to simultaneously reach
many.” Equally, despite the idea the there is no clear boundary between cyber-
fraudsters and non-cyber-fraudsters, interviewees (n = 40) stated that, based on their
experiences on frontline duties as EFCC officers, cyber-fraudsters are exclusively
“young” males. It is noteworthy that the chronological meaning of “age” as the
dominant benchmark for the definition of “youth” does not hold true across cultures
(e.g. in Nigeria). The determinants of “youthhood” in a Nigerian context transcend
age and encompass multiple cultural dimensions such as political affiliation and
positionality as well as marital status. The underlying idea is that, while some
Nigerian researchers have implicated “youths” as responsible for the bulk of cyber-
fraud originating from Nigeria, some of these researchers (e.g. Jegede et al., 2016)
use the cultural meaning of “youth/age” rather than the chronological meaning
because they also include people above 30 years of age as “youths.” In fact, critical
perspectives suggest that the meanings of youthhood are not constituted similarly
across cultures (e.g. Cain, 2000). Therefore, it is conceivable that the meaning of
“young men” or “youths” in Nigeria is culturally constructed and must be read in
terms of the definitions they carry in a Nigerian context.
5.2. The bifurcation of Yahoo-boys
Apart from the demographic characteristics of Yahoo-boys, some respondents
divided Yahoo-boys into two main groups (Yahoo- boys-digital and Yahoo-boys-

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Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
24
analogue) based on their experiences as frontline law enforcement officers. As
shown in Fig. 1, the bifurcation of Yahoo-boys was not only based on educational
background (n = 30), as previously noted, but also included other characteristics (e.g.
“network and collaborators,” “modus operandi”).
Support for the distinctions between these broad groups of Yahoo-boys in the
majority of the officers’ reports is exemplified by the following responses:
“The word ‘analogue’ and ‘digital’ is just a reference point. Yahoo analogue are
those people who are local, opportunists, without a secondary education, they see
Yahoo-Yahoo, and they jump into it. If you look at their patterns, they are quite
different from those who have passed through universities or those who are fully
educated or those who studied info-tech. You see, they are two different sets of
people, and their modus operandi, everything, are different. Somebody who just
picked up the trade from the street would not be as advanced as somebody who has
acquired university education…passed through the educational process … So, they
are two different people.” (Male investigator with over 11 years of experience):
“The Yahoo-boys-analogue generally sends thousands of scam emails to potential
victims. They do it randomly, and pray that some of targets would respond … give
them their pictures or send them personal items. They would now work on the
victims’ photos in shrines to cast spells on them and remove difficulties in
controlling and manipulating them for financial purposes. But the digitally
advanced Yahoo-boys, I think, do not rely on juju [spiritual/magical powers] a lot.
Because they rely on advanced tech to defraud victims. You can even see all these

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
25
differences when you arrest them and search their apartments. Sometimes, you find
a lot of spiritual items, victims photos in private juju alters and some amulets. They
[these types of evidence] tell you the type of person you are dealing with.” (Male
investigator with seven years of experience)
5.2.1. University and non-university education
As previously emphasized, Yahoo-boys can be divided into two broad groups based
on education and those who have a university education are quite different from
non-university educated Yahoo-boys. Education is the engine of social mobility in
modern society, whereby the time people spend in education may limit the time
they are available for participating in criminal activities (e.g. Hjalmarsson et al., 2015;
Machin et al., 2011). These authors’ ideas do not necessarily apply to “Yahoo-
Yahoo.” The time people spend in Nigerian universities does not limit the time they
are available for participating in “Yahoo-Yahoo.” Everyone can be an achiever once
the skill sets are acquired on the street. However, Yahoo-boys who generally get
ahead in “Yahoo-Yahoo” business ventures and are most sophisticated in the “scam
game” are the university-educated Yahoo-boys, according to most respondents.
Individuals who have higher educational attainment are most likely to have a higher
level of connections with the broader body of educated Nigerians in higher socio-
economic positions. The higher levels of exposure to the elite group and
technological environments may also be related to advanced knowledge and skills in
technology.

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26
Similarly, previous research on crime and education linkage has suggested that
education can also increase the earnings from crime as specific skills acquired in
school may be inappropriately used for criminal activities (e.g. Lochner, 2004;
Machin et al., 2011). Yahoo-boys-digital (university-educated cyber-fraudsters) are
not only more advanced than those who are non-university educated, they are also
more difficult for law enforcement agents to criminalize because in the words of one
respondent, “they [Yahoo-boys-digital] are always conducting their own research
even more than law enforcement.” Like the EFCC in Nigeria, law enforcement
agencies in general, even in most advanced nations, as Broadhurst (2006, p. 4) noted,
“play catch-up with cyber-savvy criminals.” Equally, while one might question why
college education may be needed in “Yahoo-Yahoo” business, email scams are
saturated with unskilled or average computer users, and technological expertise and
English language proficiency are currently needed to succeed in “Yahoo-Yahoo”
contexts. A total of 30 participants not only suggested that a large number of
university students/graduates and non-university students/graduates are involved
in perpetrating cyber-fraud, but they also supported the distinctions between the
groups of Yahoo-boys based on the theme: “university and non-university
education.” For example, ac- cording to one investigator (over 11 years of
experience):
“The digital Yahoo boys are more advanced. As an investigator, if you are dealing
with a Yahoo analogue group, the applications they normally use are the ones you
can buy online. But Yahoo-boys-digital, they don’t just buy applications online,
they’ve people who design them [Trojan or other malicious software applications]
according to their needs. They’ve their contacts who they can just say, do this and

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Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
27
this for me; I want a computer program that can perform this, maybe a Trojan horse
that can perform specific duties. He tells the programmer, this is how I want the
Trojan to work, behave and all that. Because Yahoo-boys-digital have more analytic
minds than Yahoo analogue guys. The digital guy would take his time, study the
system, identify weaknesses, think of how to beat the system. So, if you look at
the systematic way, you would see that the digital boys are more difficult to catch.
And that also indicates that they make more money than Yahoo analogue ones.”
It is noteworthy that there is a general consensus in existing studies (e.g. Jegede et
al., 2016; Ibrahim, 2017) that university students and graduates (including dropouts)
are the main perpetrators of cyber-fraud that emanates from Nigeria. Similar to
existing studies, our current study supports the idea that Nigerian university
students/graduates are the major culprits in terms of “Yahoo-Yahoo” business.
Unlike extant studies, however, our current study has, through the bifurcation of
Yahoo-boys, deconstructed the homogenization of Yahoo-boys as one group under
the umbrella of “university students/graduates.” As one agent described it, unlike
Yahoo-boys-analogue, “the more sophisticated we [agents] become, the more re-
organized with their complex syndicates they [Yahoo-boys-digital] become.”
5.2.2. Modus operandi
Since some Nigerians believe that true wealth is rooted in the spiritual realm, they
view those who have the knowledge to appease the gods and ancestral spirits as

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28
being rewarded in material terms (e.g. Lazarus, 2019a). The interviewees (n = 40)
mentioned the issue of “spiritualism in cybercrime.”, which aligns with the
existing interview studies (e.g. Melvin and Ayotunde, 2010). In particular, it was
observed that Yahoo-boys-analogue tended to use magic powers more than Yahoo-
boys-digital in their attempts not only to defraud victims but also to avoid
prosecution. To avoid prosecution here means that these criminals use
spiritual/magical powers to: [a] increase the chances of their crimes escaping the
EFCC officers’ surveillance and [b] reduce chances of the EFCC officers investigating
their crimes. In a similar vein, Frankle and Stein (2005) noted: many peoples do
not distinguish in practice between technological knowledge and magical
knowledge. In line with Frankle and Stein’s (2005) insights, we argue that with
regards to online frauds that emanate from Nigeria, the line dividing goals of
technological knowledge and magical knowledge is blurred (see also Lazarus,
2019a). Thus, it would be an oversight to pay attention to one and ignore the other.
Indeed, the goals of technological knowledge and mystical knowledge in the
“Yahoo-Yahoo” context are the same: to maximize benefits; and to avoid
prosecution. However, there are notable differences between these two spheres of
knowledge. One might argue, as Malinowski (1954/2014, p. 17) pointed out, that “we
do not find magic wherever the pursuit is certain, reliable, and well under the
control of rational methods and technological processes.” Hence, it is conceivable
that cyber-fraudsters who rely more on magical knowledge (Yahoo-boys-analogue)
than technological knowledge may be facing a less certain situation in “Yahoo-
Yahoo” business than the Yahoo-boys-digital group. It is plausible that higher
computer/technology expertise reduces the uncertainty associated with “Yahoo-
Yahoo” business ventures such as the trial-and-error scam email format popularly

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Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
29
used by the Yahoo-boys- analogue category. Equally, it is conceivable that Yahoo-
boys-analogue, facing a technological competition they cannot win (Yahoo- boys-
digital group always does), they subscribe to the occult economy to achieve their
goals. A more critical issue is that our current study helps to illuminate the specific
category of Yahoo-boys that usually depend more on mystical powers in cyber-fraud
perpetration that originates from Nigeria. A total of 28 participants supported the
distinctions between the groups of Yahoo-boys based on the theme “modus
operandi.” In the language of one investigator:
“Yahoo digital depend mostly on ‘info tech’ ... another thing about Yahoo analogue
is that you see most of them dey use juju [magical and spiritual powers] to operate
[you see, most of them use magical powers to defraud their victims]. In the sense
that when they start communicating with you [referring to victims], they would put
your picture under their laptop. Even some of them use blood, cut their hand and
put the blood on the picture and all that. You see, that is the way of a typical Yahoo
analogue guy.”
These narratives from the agent support the observation that Yahoo-boys-analogue
associate mostly with spiritualists who usually assist clients with their spiritual
needs. This category of cybercriminals depends on the spiritualists more than their
counterparts (i.e., Yahoo-Boys digital group) which resonates with the view that
people do not generally subscribe to magical/spiritual powers wherever the pursuit
is certain, reliable, and well under the control of rational methods and technological
processes. To put a victim’s picture under their laptop symbolizes the spiritual

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
30
dimension of cyber-fraud because it is a ritualized practice commonly prescribed by
spiritualists. After the spiritualist (native doctor) might have “worked on” the
picture (cast a spell on it possibly in his/her shrine), it is then necessary and
sufficient for fraudsters to simply place the photograph under the computer while
chatting/messaging the victims of fraud. Also, in the words of one respondent,
“fraudsters also talk to the [victims’] pictures repeatedly” which represent the
words-of-power (“do as I say” rhetoric), this being a spiritual way of manipulating
victims for material rewards. It may be plausible that the “authoritative language”
(Chang, 2008) and “trust rhetoric” (Rich, 2017) commonly used by some
cybercriminals to communicate with their victims could be linked to “do as I say”
rhetorical spells or words-of-power. If cyber-fraudsters believe they have spiritual
authority over victims, they may be more inclined to deploy excessive “authoritative
language” than otherwise. This spiritual worldview illuminates how, and to what
extent, the relationship between the spiritualists and Yahoo-boys-analogue is a
critical dynamic for the social construction and negotiation of identity and belonging
in “Yahoo-Yahoo” contexts. It also illuminates Kalu’s (2002, p. 674) idea that some
Nigerians could be viewed as “feeding on the red blood corpuscles of the primal
world and spiritual shrines in rural areas,” as mentioned previously. The spiritual
manipulation of victims highlighted here, indeed, urges cyber- fraud researchers “to
look beyond normal ‘scientific evidence’ and consider the traces of spiritual
manipulations of victims for material gains that are all too often ignored in ‘normal’
social science” (Lazarus, 2019a, p.1).
Notably, previous studies (e.g. Melvin and Ayotunde, 2010; Tade, 2013) have
explained that Yahoo-boys exploit the spirit world to maximize their chances of

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Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
31
success in defrauding victims online and called them “Yahoo-boys plus.” While our
current study builds on these existing bodies of knowledge, it finds that it may be
misleading to dichotomize or homogenize Yahoo-boys solely based on the
exploitation of the spiritual world for wealth accusation. The dichotomization of
these cyber-fraudsters (Yahoo-boys-analogue and Yahoo-boys-digital) includes other
factors such as networks and collaborators in the social domain, which supports the
notion that the cyberspace is a mere extension of the indigenous worldviews in
Nigerian society.
5.2.3. Networks and collaborators
While Yahoo-boys-analogue associate more with spiritualists than Yahoo-boys-
digital, the latter exclusively have connections with new music industries and
musicians. In other words, some musicians and Yahoo-Boys ‘reciprocally construct
the destiny of one another’ (Lazarus, 2018, p.74). According to Lazarus’s (2018)
study, while some musicians and Yahoo-boys are “birds of a feather that flock
together”, the core aspects of their relationship are based on reciprocal economic
benefits and determined by them. This study grouped Yahoo-boys as one group in
its analysis of con-artists’ and musical-artists’ connections, whereas the current
study sheds more light on this linkage. Unlike Yahoo-boys- analogue, Yahoo-boys-
digital predominantly “club together” with musicians who represent them in their
lyrics. For Blumer (1969a), interaction occurs within a particular social and cultural
context in which physical and social objects (persons), as well as situations, must be
defined or categorized based on individual meanings. Accordingly, the interactions

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32
and social intercourses between musicians and Yahoo- boys were critical in what
one respondent called the “cybercrime money laundry.” And a total of 26
participants supported the distinctions between the groups of Yahoo-boys based on
the theme of “networks and collaborators.” According to investigators:
“But for those who are really educated [Yahoo-boys-digital] they invest the money
and through that investment, they launder the money. If you look at all these new
music industries, most of them are used to launder money. Let me give you an
example, if you listen to one music, Oshozondi by Slimcase. Have you heard of it
before? [researcher responded, no!]. If you listen to Oshozondi, he listed names of all
the popular Yahoo Boys in Lagos. You understand. These are some of the differences
[difference between the two groups of cyber fraudsters].” (Agent with over ten years
of experience).
“Let me tell you; almost all the music labels that you see, they are being owned by
Yahoo-digital guys. And that is why you need to study what we call, ‘cyber money
laundering’! … Because people would buy different properties in the name of music
industries owned by Yahoo-boys [digital]. They’re the ones who have registered
music industries to cover the actual fraud that they are doing. They’re making it,
industry, industry, industry, but if you ask them where do you get the money to
establish those companies, all those music industries, they cannot justify it. That’s
where the cyber money laundering is coming in now.” (Agent with 12 years of
experience).

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
33
It is conceivable that the link between Yahoo-boys-digital and musicians explains
why the former (unlike Yahoo-boys-analogue) invest their income in the music
industry in Nigeria. The Yahoo-boys-digital also have an extensive network that
includes not only bank clerks who may assist ordinary Yahoo-boys-analogue to
withdraw fraudulently obtained money without questions, but also hi- tech bankers.
One male investigator described the involvement of these bankers in cybercrime
money laundering as follows:
“For every transaction, they [corrupt hi-tech bankers] get 15%. Let me give you an
example, like POS [point of sale]. For every POS, there’s a particular threshold
attached to that transaction. It means that an account is attached to POS, it might say
that it cannot receive let’s say credit transaction of more than two million a day.
Somebody managing the POS programmed from the bank, maybe the network
administrator or the application manager. What this boy [Yahoo-boy-digital] would
do if he wants to move or receive a larger sum of money; he needs somebody with a
company account. Yes? But that company has a threshold, let’s say two million or
five million. They [Yahoo-boy-digital] now need bankers to activate what we call
‘code 002’ which is a security dial monitoring the credit of that POS account. So, the
IT guy in the bank can switch it off for the fraudulent money to enter. And the
money would enter. It would not raise the alarm. You see he [the banker] has aided
and abetted crime because he has 15% of the money.”
Even if many legitimate occupations leave most workers vulnerable to financial
difficulties that imperil their capacity to provide for themselves and their

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
34
dependents, bankers are not one of the poorest group of workers in Nigeria.
Therefore, it is simplistic to assert that poverty may primarily motivate their actions.
It is plausible that the corrupt bankers described above were acting toward material
wealth on the basis of the meanings their collaborators (Yahoo-boys) have for them.
If representative, legitimate institutions aid and abet cyber-fraud to add to their
legitimate income streams. It suggests that there is a fine line between the cultural
meaning of “Yahoo-boys” and some claiming to be law-abiding Nigerians. As
indicated in the above narratives, the seeming boundary between Yahoo-boys and
some representatives of legitimate institutions, such as bankers, is blurred because
they engage in similar practices that constitute fraud and corruption.
Additionally, based on the above narratives, it is reasonable to deduce that corrupt
bankers symbolize a store of value because wealth-in-people (e.g. bankers) could
easily translate into wealth-in-money in “Yahoo-Yahoo” contexts. To have strong
allies and networks of bankers is arguably a useful asset in the accumulation of
wealth in “Yahoo-Yahoo” businesses. Similarly, previous studies (Aransiola and
Asindemade, 2011; Ibrahim, 2017) have indicated that Yahoo-boys collaborate with
bankers to maximize their chances of success in “Yahoo-Yahoo.” Our current
research, however, demonstrates that it is misleading to homogenize Yahoo-boys as
a single group with respect to three related features: “university education;”
“networks and collaborators;” and “method of operation.” Concerning the links
between legitimate institutions (banks) and the cyber-fraudsters, while Yahoo-boys-
analogue commonly associate with junior bank officers, Yahoo-boys-digital group
“club together” with senior bank officers. They generally collaborate with high-level
bankers such as network administrators and application managers. The critical point

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
35
here is that in gift giving (e.g. bribery or “dash”) the honor of giver and recipient are
reciprocally engaged and gift exchanges represent ritualized bonding between the
giver and the receiver (Droz and Gez, 2015; Mauss, 1925). While gift exchanges may
strengthen the bond between the Yahoo-boys-digital group and high-level bankers,
the lack of such exchanges may weaken the bond between high-level bankers and
Yahoo-boys-analogue and limit their chances of “moving up the ladder” (social
mobility in criminal career), given that collaborators are the integral part of “Yahoo-
Yahoo.” What is less distinguishable among Yahoo-boys is their lifestyle; we found
that they generally live extravagant lifestyles, which supports previous studies
(Lazarus 2018; Ojedokun and Eraye, 2012). The above issue (extravagant lifestyles)
deserves a closer examination.
5.3. Masculinity and material wealth
Masculinity develops out of repeated, patterned interaction and socialization
processes (West and Zimmerman, 1987). Men are culturally socialized to be the head
of the household in economic terms and are expected to translate economic power
into social prestige from time to time (Ibrahim, 2017; Lazarus et al. 2017; Smith,
2017). For example, a Nigerian man who has economic power, irrespective of his
age, under customary and Islamic types of marriages, can marry multiple wives
(Lazarus et al., 2017). Culturally, even his adultery is often seen in society as a
prestigious act (Chinwuba, 2015; Smith, 2017). A total of 29 officers had a shared
belief that men are more culturally expected to have economic power than women;
for example, according to a female investigator with 12 years of experience:

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
36
“Our culture is that a man as a man you have to take the girl o-u-t! And when a man
has one, two, three of them [women], he has to find means to support them. You see,
some married men have concubines. You also see some married men; their religion
allows them to marry three, four! So, a man with four wives in a culture where the
man has to be the provider, the bait would be much more for him than women
whose business it is to receive and look good.”
Indeed, the manifestation of conspicuous consumption in Yahoo-boys’ lives has to
be understood as a masculinity performance. The cultural and social positionality of
Nigerian men as reported above resonates with Lazarus’s (2019b, p.10) position that
“men’s hegemonic role in cyber-fraud as perpetrators is the mirror of, and made
possible by, women’s subordinate positionality in society”. ‘In virtually every arena
of Nigerian men’s lives, money’s value (and its stigma) is closely tied to the social
work that it does (or fails to do) in their relationships with other citizens’ (Smith,
2017, p. 160). Young men generally fasten their aspirations on material wealth and
“assemblage of goods,” to live a meaningful life according to the dictates of the
Nigerian society (Ellis, 2016). When a man spends money on occasions such as his
parents’ burial rites, girlfriends’ parties or wedding ceremonies, “part of what he is
doing is converting wealth into prestige” (Smith, 2017, p. 210). In Blumer’s
(1969b/1998, p. 4) words, “[T]he meaning of a thing for a person grows out of the
ways in which other persons act toward the person with regard to the thing.” Thus,
“doing gender” for Yahoo-boys is unavoidable because gender-category
membership is attached to the allocation of power and cultural expectation for men
to generate

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
37
wealth (almost by any means necessary). Accordingly, the symbolic meaning of
material wealth here underscores that it embodies not only a mechanical reflection
but the imputed sentiments.
For Cooley (1909/1998), the thing that moves us to our pride or our shame is not the
mere mechanical reflection of ourselves, but an imputed sentiment and the imagined
effect of this reflection upon another’s mind and society. Given the socially
constructed nature of masculinity as developing out of repeated, patterned
interaction and socialization processes (West and Zimmerman, 1987), the seemingly
obvious officers’ narratives on Yahoo-boys are far from straightforward. The Yahoo-
boys’ actions in the virtual world must be read in the light of cultural cues on wealth
generation and masculinity as well as the glamorization of wealth in the broader
Nigerian society. The social communities of Nigeria glamorize wealth irrespective of
the source of the wealth (Adeniran, 2011; Ibrahim, 2017; Lazarus, 2018). The
fraudulent actions of Yahoo-boys are even glamorized in Nigerian popular music
(Lazarus, 2018). This reinforces the notion that life online is a mere extension of life
in society (Lazarus, 2019b; Mumporeze and Prieler, 2017).
6. Conclusion
While this study has examined the intersections between cultural factors and
information and communication technologies, it is the first study to explore the
narratives of EFCC officers in bifurcating Yahoo-boys and their operations. While

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
38
prior studies, for example, indicated that only a group of cybercriminals deploy
spiritual and magical powers to defraud victims (i.e., modus operandi), our study
has extended this classification into more refined levels in its bifurcation of
cybercriminals. ‘Distinguishing between categories of criminals is critical to
theoretical advancement, policy and practice’ as Helfgott (2013, p.21) reminded us.
In particular, the narratives of officers have provided insights which may help
various local and international agencies [a] to understand the actions/features of
these two groups of cybercriminals better and develop more effective response
strategies; and [b] to appreciate the vulnerabilities of their victims better and
develop more adequate support schemes. Indeed, insights from our study could
help various local and international agencies, as well as social scientists around the
world, to understand the actions/features of these two groups of cybercriminals
better (as illustrated in Figure 1). One might also be inclined to suggest that, for
example, these insights may help relevant agencies in understanding the best
strategy to reduce the occurrences of these crimes. By benefitting from the basic
premises of the interactionist position, this study has proposed that, since
indigenous worldview and masculinity emerge out of repeated, patterned
interaction and socialization processes, “Yahoo-Yahoo” may be one of the ways
these Yahoo-boys construct their culturally expected identity regarding wealth
acquisition in society. Because of this, we believe insights from this research have
implications for the value of the interactionist perspective in making sense of crimes
on the Internet. Unlike the existing studies on Yahoo-boys, our study has found
evidence to deconstruct the homogenization of these cyber- fraudsters as one group
(e.g. with respects to “educational attainment” and “networks/collaborations”).
Specifically, it has instead pro- posed rather dualistic groups based on three factors

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
39
(educational attainment, modus operandi, networks and collaborators) that shed
fresh light on a range of prevailing perspectives on Yahoo-boys.
First, there is consensus that young male university students/graduates are
predominantly the perpetrators of cyber-fraud (Adeniran, 2011; Ibrahim, 2017); the
current study, however, demonstrates that a considerable number of non-university
students are also involved in perpetrating cyber-fraud. Second, prior qualitative
studies identified that some Yahoo-boys use magical/spiritual powers to defraud
victims (Melvin and Ayotunde, 2010; Tade, 2013). Like these previous studies, the
current study indicates that a group of these cybercriminals (Yahoo-boys-analogue)
depends more on spiritual powers for their “Yahoo-Yahoo” business than others
(Yahoo-boys-digital). Unlike the prevailing studies, the current study also indicates
Yahoo- boys can be divided with respect to other attributes: “university education;”
“networks and collaborators;” and “method of opera- tion.” Third, while our study
concurs with previous qualitative studies that suggests Yahoo-boys live extravagant
lifestyles (Lazarus, 208; Ojedokun and Eraye, 2012), the current study has additional
contributions. First, it explains that, although most Yahoo-boys live a lavish lifestyle,
a group of them (Yahoo-boys-digital) invest their illicit income predominantly in
legitimate businesses, such as the music industry. Second, it notes that a conspicuous
lifestyle for male Nigerians in itself is a mere reflection of gender nuances in society.
While our study provides valuable contributions to the existing body of knowledge,
it should be viewed in light of a few fundamental limitations. Its primary weakness
is that it offers only a top-down view of a selected group on Yahoo-boys. The

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
40
perspectives of some frontline enforcers of the law on criminals, as Reiner (2016)
noted, are commonly susceptible to prejudice, given that the human narratives about
their fellow men/women are culturally defined. “People’s experience of the world is
always mediated by culturally defined meanings, which, although adopted by their
personal experience, condition how and what they conceive as reality” (Longo, 2015,
p. 34) as previously mentioned. Equally, we acknowledge the potential dangers of
using interviews with social-control agents to discuss offenders because some of
them may not (and often do not) have the full picture of the criminals. Additionally,
caution should be applied in the interpretation of the officers’ narratives concerning
Yahoo-Boys and their activities. This is because, we cannot escape the conclusion
that all interviews, and interview data, as Morris (2018) and Ribbens (1989)
observed, are socially constructed and are products of social encounters within a
particular social structure.
The above limitations by no means undermine the importance of this study’s main
achievement: the bifurcation of Yahoo-boys. Our analyses have helped to propose
that these cybercriminals can be grouped into two main categories, based on the
multiple axes of differentiation discussed. In Nigeria, “cybercrime” may be
fundamentally rooted in socioeconomics (Ibrahim, 2016; Ojedokun and Eraye, 2012)
and indigenous worldviews within the occult economy (Lazarus, 2019a; Tade, 2013).
Indeed, online behaviors are mere reflections of the symbolic meaning and
consequences of social products (e.g. the occult economy and the prestige of material
wealth) and social actors such as the Yahoo-boys, corrupt bankers, and spiritualists.
By implication, the different “business associates,” as well as preferred methods of
operations of Yahoo-boys-digital and Yahoo-boys-analogue, reinforce the idea that

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
41
life online is an extension of life offline, reflecting contextual and cultural nuances
(Lazarus, 2019b; Mumporeze and Prieler, 2017).
This article has therefore proposed that, since the occult economy and masculinity
develop out of repeated, patterned interaction and socialization processes, cyber-
fraud may be one of the ways Yahoo-boys and their associates construct culturally
expected identities in society. This, in particular, may be responsible for rendering
fraudulent practices acceptable career paths for Yahoo-boys and some
representatives of legitimate institutions. Since Yahoo-boys defraud a multitude of
victims globally, as Cross (2018) and Lazarus (2018, 2019a) suggested, a better
understanding of this phenomenon lies in our capacity to unconditionally value all
insights across the global South and global North.

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
42
Author contribution statements
[a] S.L. conceived & designed the study. [b] G.U.O. recruited & interviewed the
participants. [c] S.L. analyzed & interpreted the data. [d] G.U.O. verified the
interpretation of data. [e] S.L. drafted the whole article. [f] S.L. carried out the critical
revisions of the article. [g] S.L. & G.U.O. read & approved the published version.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank all the participants who gave their time and shared their stories.
The authors are fully responsible for the views expressed in this article: the article
does not represent the views of the authors’ institutional affiliations.
Authors-Information
Dr Suleman Lazarus is a qualitative sociologist and his research interests include the
cultural dimensions of digital crimes. While he completed an empirical study on the
connections between hip hop artists and cybercriminals in 2018, one of his
theoretical works in 2019 nuances “the synergy between feminist criminology and
the Tripartite Cybercrime Framework.” He is also a published poet and his most
recent poem is entitled, “Betrayals in Academia and a Black Demon from Ephesus.”
Email: Suleman.lazarus@gmail.com
Geoffrey U. Okolorie is a digital forensics expert, a fraud examiner and cybercrime
investigator who is currently a postgraduate research student in the UK. He is a
member of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nigeria, as well
as a member of various local and international professional organizations. Email:
gokolorie@efccnigeria.org

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Lazarus, S., & Okolorie, G. U. (2019). The bifurcation of the Nigerian cybercriminals: Narratives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents. Telematics and Informatics, 40, 14-26.
43
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