Scammers Are Creating Fake News Videos to Blackmail Victims

When online romance and sextortion scammers sense they’ve found a victim who may send them money, they’ll use all kinds of villainous methods to get paid. They’ll frequently stoop to blackmail—and are constantly creating more devious approaches to incorporate it into their grifts. In recent months, cybercriminals have taken their blackmailing efforts up a notch, creating realistic-looking “news” videos that claim their victims are wanted for crimes.

Scammers based in West Africa, likely in Nigeria, and going under the broad umbrella of the Yahoo Boys, have increasingly been seen sending blackmail victims videos likely using AI-generated news anchors in a bid to pressure victims into paying up. A WIRED review of posts on Telegram by self-styled Yahoo Boys shows the cybercriminals are impersonating television stations based in the US and sharing tutorials about how to create the blackmailing videos.

The videos follow a sinister pattern. One video—which can be seen in the image below—uses CNN’s logo and branding to impersonate the news organization, with text at the bottom of the screen describing the “breaking news.” On the screen, a likely AI-generated newsreader starts talking.

“Good day. My name is Kristina Lawson, reporting from New Jersey,” the anchor says in the nearly minute-long clip. “Just in: We have received a credible report regarding a disturbing incident.” The fake presenter says that a “young lady” has come forward to allege that they were sexually assaulted by an older man. In the video, the man, who is the target of the scam, is named, and a photograph of him appears onscreen.

Other videos seen by WIRED feature different news readers and names of news channels, but they also show more graphic photos of the potential blackmail targets, including nude and explicit images. In one “news” clip, the screen is split in two, with a photo of a man’s face on one side and the other side is a short video clip of him allegedly masturbating.

David Maimon, the head of fraud insights at SentiLink and a professor at Georgia State University who first spotted the CNN video in December, says the fraudsters have made a number of “disturbing” changes to their blackmailing tactics in recent months, including trying to humiliate people and potentially targeting those outside of English-speaking countries.

Photograph Courtesy of Telegram

Typically, Yahoo Boy scammers message hundreds of people online while posing as members of the opposite sex using pictures stolen from social media profiles. They run all types of scams, but for those that involve blackmail, they often attempt to build up a relationship with their potential victim and obtain compromising information—most commonly, nude images. Then they shift gears.

“At some point, they reveal their identity after they get everything that they need, and then they start blackmailing,” Maimon says. They demand money and threaten to release images online or send them to family and friends if they’re not paid. “One of the approaches they use in order to make sure that the blackmail is realistic is actually producing those news clips that they send to the victims and in a way push them, nudge them, to pay the blackmail,” he says. “They try to push you to make decisions under conditions of stress, under conditions of urgency.”

Yahoo Boy fraudsters widely use social media platform Telegram as a way of organizing, chatting with each other, and as a marketplace where they sell knowledge and tutorials about how to operate different types of scams. The “news” videos seen by WIRED appear to include the details and images of real-world victims, although it was not possible to immediately verify the cases.

Brian Mason, a constable with the Edmonton Police Service in Canada who investigates fraud and works with the victims of scams, says he has seen cases where videos or screenshots of fake CNN broadcasts have been sent to victims. “It looks like your typical CNN broadcast,” Mason says. “It’s very, very convincing.” Mason says the approach has been utilized in sextortion scams, which commonly target teenagers and have been linked to a series of suicides.

Mason says he has seen incidents where the news clips falsely accuse scam victims of talking with underage females and that police are searching for them or have issued warrants for their arrest. “It makes the victim panic, because now they’re seeing themselves on this broadcast, and it’s a screen capture from when they were actually talking with the scammer from their own webcam,” Mason adds. The effect can potentially push the person into sending money or following demands from the scammers.

Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn tells WIRED that activities observed in the scammer channels are a violation of the app’s rules and suggested the company would take action against such channels.

“Content encouraging scamming is explicitly forbidden by Telegram’s terms of service,” Vaughn says. “Moderators empowered with custom AI and machine learning tools proactively monitor public parts of the platform and accept reports from users and organizations in order to remove millions of pieces of harmful content each day.”

Last year, Telegram removed more than a dozen Yahoo Boy channels after WIRED reported on their public activity; however, the scammers still have a presence on the platform and other social media platforms, including Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube.

Messages shared within Telegram channels show how the fraudsters are quick to evolve their cons, use new technologies, and widely share or sell advice with each other. For instance, when people moved to Chinese alternative Rednote ahead of the proposed TikTok ban in the US earlier this month, Yahoo Boys recommended targeting people who had joined the app.

Within one Telegram channel, which has 10,000 subscribers, a scammer explained the steps needed to create false news videos and mocked-up front pages of newspapers over a series of messages. “In blackmailing (BM) work we get two different types which are: TV news [and] newspapers,” the first message says.

In subsequent messages, they gave examples of text that can be inserted into the script for the news bulletin, which says the alleged victim has been “accused of distributing nude images and videos without consent.” All a scammer following the tutorial needs to do is substitute the name and town of their victim and add any pictures they have.

The tutorial suggests headlines for news articles, such as “Local Man Accused of Online Blackmail and Harassment.” It also lists the names of US TV news networks, cable news, and “specialized news”—it listed 17 news outlets ranging from ABC News and Fox News to C-Span and Al Jazeera America. One other cybercriminal shared a video of a folder of blackmail scripts and tutorials needed to create fake news items.

In some fabricated news videos, the news anchor appears to be an AI-generated avatar, although it was not possible to determine which software was being used to create the clips. Tutorials shared on Telegram, however, also show that the grifters are not always using sophisticated technology. Some apps they point to are simple “meme generators.”

Last year, WIRED reported on how Yahoo Boys are adopting deepfake face-swapping technology to make video calls with their targets and try to “prove” their false identities are real. However, Maimon also points to one troubling video shared by Yahoo Boy scammers that appears to show a potential victim making a video to apologize for questioning the scammer’s fake identity.

Within the video, the woman says, “I am truly sorry that I called you a fake” and asks the scammer to accept their apology. The individual says they hope they get to meet the person they believe they are in love with in the future, before they start removing their clothes to “make up” for the earlier accusation. “I think that what followed that video was them blackmailing her,” Maimon explains, “and of course posting it on the markets they’re on.”

Updated 10:45 am EST, January 28, 2025: Added comment from a Telegram spokesperson.