The Yahoo Boys: Real Life with the Love Scammers of Lagos

A NEW YORK TIMES MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026

'AFFECTING' TELEGRAPH
'ENGROSSING' ECONOMIST
'MIRACULOUS' WIRED
'MORE THAN CRIME REPORTAGE' WALL STREET JOURNAL

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.

'BARRAGÁN WRITES WITH IMPECCABLE EMPATHY . . . COMPELLINGLY READABLE' BARBARA DEMICK
'ASTONISHING . . . I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN. A TOUR DE FORCE' JON LEE ANDERSON
'BOTH INTIMATELY PERSONAL AND GLOBALLY RELEVANT' DIPO FALOYIN
'AN ENVIABLE FEAT OF REPORTAGE AND WRITING - AS INTREPID AS IT IS SYMPATHETIC' GIDEON LEWIS-KRAUS