A 'Yahoo boy', Fidelis Iruedo has been apprehended by representatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), while trying to withdraw a sum of £30,000 from a bank in Abuja.
The arrest was made on Wednesday, January 24, 2018, according to local media.
Iruedo had reportedly acquired the amount through an Internet romance scam carried out against a citizen of the United Kingdom.
A petition submitted to the anti-graft body by the Nigerian High Commission, Londonon behalf of the victim Alan Digweed, had ensured his arrest.
It was alleged that he met the UK man on a dating site match.com while pretending to be a woman named Tracy Andersonunder whosename he secured a British passport.
According to reports, items recovered from thesuspect include"several scam letters, 3 flash drives, 1 iPhone and a laptop computer.
"He is expected to be arraigned in acourt of lawas soon as investigations are concluded.
Another Yahoo Boy In September 2017, A Nigerian man,AlexanderAkinyele, said to be a notorious Internet fraudster popularly called Yahoo-Boy,was found guilty and sentencedto jail for two yearsand four months by aPreston Crown Courtin the United Kingdom.
Mail Onlinereported that the 37-year-old Akinyele had pleaded guilty to 10 fraud offences bordering on a Computer Misuse Act Offence and possession of a false ID with intent to commit a crime.
The fraudster was caught after he allegedly threw a wallet full of bogus credit cards out of his window when NCA officers arrived to arrest him at his house on Doncaster Place, Barrow-in-Furness.
The version of Internet fraud that has earned Nigerians a reputation across the globe started in the final third of the 1990s. Sometime afterYahoo Mailwas created in 1997, scammers found that they could replacetheir hand-written letters with the freedom and immediacy of electronic mail messages, and they moved in droves.
Internet fraud picked up circa 2002 in Nigeria and grew to become a menace for better part of that decade. Yahoo Yahoo is no longer in itsheyday but there are still many criminals lurking on the web trying to dupe people of their hard earned money.
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