http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/05/29/8378124/

Check out this article about yahoo yahoo boys, they have attained international acclaim


(FORTUNE Magazine) - Akin is, like many things in cyberspace, an alias. In real life he's 14. He wears Adidas sneakers, a Rolex Submariner watch, and a kilo of gold around his neck.

Akin, who lives in Lagos, is one of a new generation of entrepreneurs that has emerged in this city of 15 million, Nigeria's largest. His mother makes $30 a month as a cleaner, his father about the same hustling at bus stations. But Akin has made it big working long days at Internet cafes and is now the main provider for his family and legions of relatives.

Call him a "Yahoo! millionaire."

Akin buys things online - laptops, BlackBerries, cameras, flat-screen TVs - using stolen credit cards and aliases. He has the loot shipped via FedEx or DHL to safe houses in Europe, where it is received by friends, then shipped on to Lagos to be sold on the black market. (He figures Americans are too smart to sell a camera on eBay to a buyer with an address in Nigeria.)

Akin's main office is an Internet cafe in the Ikeja section of Lagos. He spends up to ten hours a day there, seven days a week, huddled over one of 50 computers, working his scams.

And he's not alone: The cafe is crowded most of the time with other teenagers, like Akin, working for a "chairman" who buys the computer time and hires them to extract e-mail addresses and credit card information from the thin air of cyberspace. Akin's chairman, who is computer illiterate, gets a 60 percent cut and reserves another 20 percent to pay off law enforcement officials who come around or teachers who complain when the boys cut school. That still puts plenty of cash in Akin's pocket.

A sign at the door of the cafe reads, WE DO NOT TOLERATE SCAMS IN THIS PLACE. DO NOT USE E-MAIL EXTRACTORS OR SEND MULTIPLE MAILS OR HACK CREDIT CARDS. YOU WILL BE HANDED OVER TO THE POLICE. NO 419 ACTIVITY IN THIS CAFE. The sign is a joke; 419 activity, which refers to the section of the Nigerian law dealing with obtaining things by trickery, is a national pastime. There are no coherent laws relating to e-scams, the police are mostly computer illiterate, and penalties for financial crimes are light.
No penalties for breaking the law

"The deterrent factor is not there at all," says Thomas Oli, a Lagos lawyer, citing the case of a former police inspector general who was convicted of stealing more than $100 million and got only six months in jail.

"What do you want me to do?" Akin asks in pidgin English, explaining why he turned to a life of Internet crime. "It is my God-given talent. Our politicians, they do their own; me, I'm doing my own. I feed my family - my sister, my mother, my popsie. Man must survive."

The scams perpetrated by Akin and his comrades are many and varied: moneygram interceptions, Western Union hijackings, check laundering, identity theft, and outright begging, with tall tales of dying relatives and large sums of money in search of safe haven. One popular online fraud often practiced by women (or boys pretending to be women) involves separating lonely men from their money.

Attempts to speak to government officials about Internet crime were futile. They all claimed ignorance of such scams; some laughed it off as Western propaganda.

But last November the Economic Fraud and Financial Crimes Commission won a high-profile case that had dragged on for years against Emmanuel Nwude, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years for bilking a Brazilian bank out of $242 million using an Internet scam involving phony bank drafts. The commission is also pursuing a case against 419 kingpin Fred Ajudua, a lawyer and businessman accused of using the Internet to steal $1 million from a victim in Germany.

Some officials, who asked not be identified, said young people are drawn to Internet crime as a way of getting back at a society that has no plans for them. Others see it as a form of reparation for the sins of the West.

Or as Akin puts it, "White people are too gullible. They are rich, and whatever I gyp them out of is small change to them."

na wa ooo

Isnt there better things that could be done on the net?

That is quite sad

Its not just sad its shameful. No one wants to work and earn an honest wage anymore they just want to get rich quick at any cost. When will Nigerians be able to shake off the 419 tag?

This is nothing to be proud of

we seems to have lost our sense of dignity

people care less about how you come about what youhave

hope you will appreciate hardwork and dignified wealth more than anything
god bless nigeria

Its even worse when a whole family encourages criminal activity because they benefit from it. Will they also benefit for it when they are finally exposed and disgraced nationally and have to move from their neighborhood and change their name?

Theres a difference between desperation and greed. These yahoo fools are just greedy!

not only are these ppl victimising the ppl they scam from but also the ppl they steal their pics from, l can understand ppl doing such a thing if they are starving to death and have no way out but as this little 14 yr old that is extremely naive to the real world say he has laptops, BlackBerries, cameras, flat-screen TVs and He wears Adidas sneakers, a Rolex Submariner watch, and a kilo of gold around his neck. Doesn't sound like a starving person to me. so its very easy to see its all greed and nothing else,

This sore of attention to Nigeria has not done your country any good, so lm finding it very hard right now to understand why any aid should be given to ur country cos u seem to be doing just fine on ur own bring in the dollars (but the scammers are greedy and wouldn't be the sort to help their own kind), maybe a few have gained out of such behaviour but its a whole country that's going to have to pay for ur sins,

There are any many ways to make a honest living on the net so u cant even claim its cos of a lack of work, but l am interested to chat to any yahoo boy and get his/her point of view as l am trying to understand so if ur reading this pls feel free to contact me as lm very very interested,

Hmmmmmmm, Naija!, actually to me an hungry man is an hungry lion, lets take a look at the world i guess it almost getting to an end, different different things would be happening, If one doesn't have something to eat and survive definitely he or she would act in as a lion, the only way Nigeria could get out of this shit is, the government should try and encourage the youth, and create job opportunity,

Blame it on the system.

Yes the system. Lets forget about english cos have seen that is part of our problem.
If you wan reduce dis scam thng to the bearest minimum, brothers we go start from the head. Take some of our leaders as examples; them steal $48 billion and when them come they exposed u know wetin go happen dem go ask them to pay $500 million but if we hungry Nigerian steal N1,000 not to talk of N1,000,000 you know where we go find ourselves,police nest even go jail. So, for those talking negative about yahoo boys. Do something for me, "Deal with the fk head". O.K

ephilipand: Yes the system. Lets forget about english cos have seen that is part of our problem.
If you wan reduce dis scam thng to the bearest minimum, brothers we go start from the head. Take some of our leaders as examples; them steal $48 billion and when them come they exposed u know wetin go happen dem go ask them to pay $500 million but if we hungry Nigerian steal N1,000 not to talk of N1,000,000 you know where we go find ourselves,police nest even go jail. So, for those talking negative about yahoo boys. Do something for me, "Deal with the fk head". O.K

i Gbadun U joor. Someone said ppl don't want to work dixdayz do you think its easy to wrk on the internet? Men your brain go Hot like hell. And for those leader do you know wat they av gone through before they made it to where they are and what they are still doing as we speak write now? The world is going crazy everybody wana be a succesfull man.

Emanuel Nwude (Owelle Abagana). I saw him last during d day of election in his new Ferrari.