The Yahoo Boys
On sale
11th June 2026
Price: £22
Genre
When his mother fell for an ‘American soldier’ who promised to send gold bars to their Madrid apartment, Carlos Barragán found himself with an unexpected window into the shadowy world of online romance fraud. He set off on a journey to find his mother’s scammer, but what he discovered was much bigger: a world of young Nigerian men who drag themselves out of destitution by catfishing lonely hearts in the US and Europe, in the process building a dizzying local economy from their phones.
The Yahoo Boys follows four scammers in Ikotun – one of Lagos’s poorest neighbourhoods, a scant ten miles from the gleaming heart of the megacity. Through their twisting fortunes, Barragán discovers the psychological tactics they perfect, the economic desperation that drives them, and the moral dilemmas they face. A work of radical empathy, this astonishing narrative nonfiction debut reveals the human face behind a global phenomenon, and shows how isolation in the West and poverty in Nigeria are just two sides of the same screen.
The Yahoo Boys follows four scammers in Ikotun – one of Lagos’s poorest neighbourhoods, a scant ten miles from the gleaming heart of the megacity. Through their twisting fortunes, Barragán discovers the psychological tactics they perfect, the economic desperation that drives them, and the moral dilemmas they face. A work of radical empathy, this astonishing narrative nonfiction debut reveals the human face behind a global phenomenon, and shows how isolation in the West and poverty in Nigeria are just two sides of the same screen.
Reviews
Carlos Barragán traveled to Lagos, Nigeria in search of the con artist who had romanced his divorced mother. He found himself submerged in the sleepless, hard-partying world of the Yahoo Boys - a subculture fueled by music, booze and drugs, as well as poverty and ambition and even love. Barragán writes with impeccable empathy about both the scammers and their lonelyheart victims . . . A compellingly readable exploration of the psychology of the romance scam
Fascinating and important. Carlos Barragán has constructed something full of warmth and empathy, both intimately personal and globally relevant
I have found few books lately as immediately compelling as Barragán's . . . As an unexpected, fresh take on the bewilderingly quicksilver world we live in, The Yahoo Boys is a tour-de-force
If Carlos Barragán's The Yahoo Boys were merely a picaresque tour of the world of Nigerian scammers, it would have been worth it for the entertainment value alone. In his hands, however, this is a technically sophisticated, emotionally acute, and sociologically wise exploration of a shadow economy driven by devices, loneliness, and global inequality. It's an enviable feat of reportage and writing - as intrepid as it is sympathetic