The suspects, through a series of comments, demanded between N5,000 and N50,000 from those who wanted to learn classified sites for defrauding people, especially foreigners, and offered options of online, as well as physical teaching platforms.
Hundreds of persons, including students, graduates and ladies, indicated interest in learning the skills for making quick money and provided their mobile numbers on the SFU Facebook page.
The comments were reactions to a post by the SFU sensitising the public to Internet fraud.
The unit in the post tagged, ‘Common Tricks Yahoo boys use to Swindle Foreigners Revealed,’ had warned people against falling victims of the fraudsters.
The post read in part, “One of the tricks they use in swindling foreigners is called ‘Freestyle.’ The Freestyle trick is the simplest and it is common among starters. Applying Freestyle trick, all you need to do is to open an account in any of the popular dating sites and look for someone to fall in love with you; afterwards, he or she starts paying your bills, sending hard currency.
“Also, one of the major tricks, Yahoo and Sakawa boys are using to perpetuate this act is ‘Over Payment.’ The Over Payment trick requires a lot of processes. The Yahoo boy who uses this trick pretends to be a prospective buyer by logging into any of the popular Internet classified sites, after which he offers the person who he is buying from, a cheque as a mode of payment.

“In this case, Yahoo boys have a way of persuading the seller to send the excess after issuing an over payment cheque. With this trick, a Yahoo boy can buy goods worth $1,000 and issue a cheque of $5,000. What the Yahoo boy is interested in is not the goods he claimed to be interested in, but the excess money that will be sent to him after the cheque must have been cashed.”
The update concluded with a slogan ‘Say No to Fraud;’ but what trailed the slogan was brazen defiance to the police warning, with commentators boasting of their mettle in various Internet scam sites.
The comments had reached over 1,762 with 158 shares as of 8.17pm on Tuesday.
In one of his comments, one Thomas Joshua, wrote, “If you are interested in G (Yahoo yahoo), message me ASAP (as soon as possible) via +2349021933459. Tutor fee is 5k (N5,000). I will teach you how to make cool money in a week and if you have interest in hacking, wire transfer, ATM card hacking etc., message me ASAP.”
One Kingxam Millionz stated that he ran tutorials on classified sites such as Dating, Spamming, Next of kin, Letgo and Grant, among others, with a fee ranging from N5,000 to N15,000.
Another poster, Stev Emmanuel, gave out his email address and phone number, 07064229454, to intending members, saying “Hello dear friends, for those that want to be Yahoo boys, here comes your opportunity.”