Understanding Cybercrime Perpetrators and the Strategies They Employ in Nigeria

Abstract

A lot has been written on cybercrime and its prevention, but the problem has proved particularly resilient to remedial action. Desperate and vulnerable individuals in every continent continue to fall into its trap. Despite this, there is dearth of descriptive study that attempts to unravel the strategies employed by the perpetrators in Nigeria, as an important precondition for workable and reliable policy direction to address the problem. This article has filled this gap by using data from 40 cybercrime perpetrators selected with snowballing technique. The findings revealed that most of the cybercrime perpetrators in Nigeria are between the age of 22 and 29 years who were undergraduates and have distinctive lifestyles from other youths. Their strategies include collaboration with security agents and bank officials, local and international networking, and the use of voodoo that is, traditional supernatural power. It was clear that most perpetrators of cybercrime were involved in on-line dating and buying and selling with fake identity among others. The article discussed the need for reorientation of Nigerian youths in higher institutions, and various methods as guiding principles for potential victims. It recommended a complete reorganization of the Nigerian Police Force and Economic and Financial Crime Commission, as some of the officers in the institutions aid and abet cybercrime. It finally suggested a review of the Nigerian law guiding the operations of banking, poster agencies, and various speed post services in the country, as these are necessary preconditions to effectively combat the problem.

Where Is the Money? The Intersectionality of the Spirit World and the Acquisition of Wealth

“…The term Yahoo-Boys not only signifies that the perpetrators of the infamous yahoo-yahoo are predominantly male (Cross 2018;Lazarus 2018), but also indicates that they are young. Other empirical studies support the youthhood 4 of Yahoo-Boys as well (e.g., Aransiola and Asindemade 2011;Lazarus and Okolorie 2019).…”

Cybercrime in West Africa as a Result of Transboundary E-Waste

“…(p. 397) Therefore, a common suggestion to combatting cybercrime in western Africa is the creation of more jobs for youth (Boateng et al, 2011;Uddin & Uddin, 2013). The typical Nigerian or Ghanaian Internet scammer, for example, is male, under the age of 30, from a lower-income background, and resides near urban centers with easy access to Internet cafes (Aransiola & Asindemade, 2011;Warner, 2011), indicating that the lack of opportunity, combined with easy-to-access computer hard drives and Internet capabilities, makes the temptation too great for cybercriminals. Further development of social programs in the region may help to remove would-be cybercriminals from the trade.…”

“…These cybercriminals will typically contact Westerners over social media sites (i.e., Facebook or Twitter) or sometimes even via online dating Web sites (such as eHarmony.com or Match.com) and establish a rapport with an individual using this false identity (Warner, 2011). The fraudster will then cultivate a relationship with their victim, which oftentimes is romantic in nature (Aransiola & Asindemade, 2011;Warner, 2011). Over time, they will ask their victim for personal information, such as bank and financial information, names of close relatives, and passwords, often promising some benefit in exchange (Warner, 2011).…”

Just married: the synergy between feminist criminology and the Tripartite Cybercrime Framework

“…They found that offenders draw on gendered themes to align their actions with cultural expectations of masculinity and femininity. For example, qualitative studies found that while Nigerian men (and boys) predominate in “cybercrime” as perpetrators, most Nigerians involved in “cybercrime” types, in general, are involved in cyber‐fraud in particular (e.g., Aransiola and Asindemade ; Lazarus ; Lazarus and Okolorie ). Women, however, play subordinate roles, such as the retrieval of fraud proceeds (e.g., Jegede et al .…”