THE YAHOO BOYS, real life with the love scammers of Lagos

287pp., paperback, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2026

ISBN: 9781399632195

Carlos Barragán travels to Nigeria to find his mother’s scammer, and discovers a shadowy world of online romance fraud, where young Nigerian men drag themselves out of poverty by catfishing people made vulnerable by the West's loneliness epidemic.

The Yahoo Boys follows four scammers in Ikotun, one of Lagos’s poorest neighbourhoods, and uncovers the psychological tactics they perfect, the economic desperation that drives them, and the moral dilemmas they face,  revealing the human face behind a global phenomenon.

"Fascinating and important. Carlos Barragán has constructed something full of warmth and empathy, both intimately personal and globally relevant" Dipo Faloyin, author of Africa Is Not A Country

"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" Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of A Sense of Direction

Carlos Barragán is a reporter and researcher at The New York Times based in Spain. Raised in Madrid, he earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University. The Yahoo Boys is his first book.