The case of the Frenchwoman, which hit the headlines, illustrates the way in which Nigerian scammers turn to new technologies to scam their victims. The scammers made the victim, identified as Anne, 53, by French channel TF1, believe that she was in a romantic relationship with the 61-year-old Hollywood star, using photos generated by artificial intelligence.
Scammers in Nigeria
Anne was first targeted on Instagram by someone posing as Brad Pitt’s mother after she shared photos of herself skiing in the French mountains. Scammers claimed the actor urgently needed money to pay for kidney treatment, alleging his bank accounts had been frozen due to ongoing divorce proceedings from ex-wife Angelina Jolie.
According to Anne’s lawyer, Laurène Hanna, her client lost 830,000 euros ($850,000). The victim and his defense called on Marwan Ouarab, the founder of the site FindmyScammer.com, specializing in digital investigation services, to try to find the scammers, the lawyer declared on X.
According to the French daily “Le Parisien”, which quotes Mr. Ouarab, the crooks – three men in their twenties – are in Nigeria.
Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said it could only launch an investigation if a complaint was submitted to it. “This is a complaint that authorizes the EFCC to act,” said its spokesperson, Dele Oyewale.
“A new tool for an old crime”
In November 2022, a US court sentenced Ramon Abbas, a Nigerian fraudster once popular with politicians and celebrities, to 135 months in prison and pay $1.73 million in restitution to two fraud victims.
Artificial intelligence is “a new tool for an old crime,” said cybercrime expert Timothy Avele. The “recourse to AI and deepfake” will “erase the enormous progress made and take us back more than twenty years” in the fight against these criminals, he added.
-Last July, Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, removed 63,000 Instagram accounts linked to sextortion scams in Nigeria.
In cases of sextortion, young men or adolescents are persuaded to send compromising photos to fraudsters posing as young women who then blackmail them. About two months after Meta’s decision, two Nigerian brothers, Samuel and Samson Ogoshi, 24 and 21, were sentenced to 210 months in prison each after “sexually exploiting and extorting more than 100 victims,” including 11 minors.
Nearly 800 people arrested
“Foreign cybercrime syndicates” are also exploiting Nigeria’s weaknesses in cybersecurity systems and finding it a “profitable place to set up their centers of operations,” Avele says.
The EFCC’s Oyewale says the agency is ready to “tackle all emerging crimes, including AI-based crimes.”
Last month, the EFCC said it arrested 792 suspects in a single operation in the affluent Victoria Island area of Nigeria’s economic capital, Lagos. At least 192 of the suspects were foreign nationals, including 148 Chinese, the agency said.
