Just days after being slapped with a hefty USD 220 M fine by Nigeria's Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) for privacy violations, Meta Platforms Inc. has announced a crackdown on financial sextortion scams originating from the country.
The social media giant revealed on Wednesday it had removed thousands of accounts linked to scammers who used its platforms to blackmail victims after soliciting intimate photos.
We've removed around 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria attempting to target people with financial sextortion scams, including a coordinated network of around 2,500 accounts, Meta said in a statement. We've also removed a set of Facebook accounts, Pages and Groups run by Yahoo Boys - banned under our Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy - that were attempting to organize, recruit and train new scammers.
This follows a Bloomberg Businessweek expose on the rapid rise of financial sextortion in the US, which traced many of the scams back to Nigeria.
"Financial sextortion is a horrific crime that can have devastating consequences," Meta added. "This is an adversarial space where criminals evolve to evade our ever-improving defenses."
