I've lived in Nigeria, and I can tell you the country is full of warm, funny, hardworking people who would give you the shirt off their back. I've also spent years now helping women untangle themselves from a very specific kind of scam that gets called "Yahoo Boy" fraud, and the two things are not the same conversation. One is about a nation of over 200 million people. The other is about a documented, organized criminal subculture that recruits young men into online fraud as a career, the same way any organized crime group recruits. This post is about the second thing, and only the second thing.

Law enforcement, journalists, and fraud researchers use the term "Yahoo Boy" openly because it names a real, studied phenomenon: scammers, largely based in parts of Nigeria and neighboring West African countries, who run romance and financial fraud as an actual job, often with scripts, shared photo libraries, and coaching from more experienced scammers. Knowing this term and how these scams work does not mean assuming the worst about a man because of the country he is from or how he types. It means knowing the specific behaviors these fraud rings train their recruits to use, so you can notice them calmly instead of being blindsided by them.

This Is About Patterns, Not Where Someone Is From

I want to say this plainly before anything else. Most people messaging you from Nigeria, or anywhere in West Africa, or honestly anywhere in the world, are exactly who they say they are. Being from a certain country is not a red flag. An accent in his English is not a red flag. A name that sounds unfamiliar to you is not a red flag. If you start treating an entire nationality as suspect, you'll end up either missing a genuinely good man because you talked yourself out of him, or you'll be so busy being suspicious of the wrong things that you miss the actual warning signs sitting right in front of you.

What actually matters is behavior. Specific, observable things said and done in those first messages. That's what I want to walk you through, because those patterns show up again and again once you know what to look for, and they show up regardless of where a scammer claims to be from.

What to Notice in the First Ten Messages

Here's the quick version: the six patterns worth watching for. I'll walk through each one below.

• Opening lines that feel scripted or copy-pasted
• Grammar or tone that doesn't match his stated background
• A fast push to move off the dating app
• Affection that escalates faster than the conversation has
• Excuses about video calls
• A profession that conveniently explains away every red flag

Opening lines that feel scripted

A real person messaging you cold usually says something about your actual profile. Your dog, your travel photo, something you wrote in your bio. A scripted opener skips all of that and goes straight to something generic and slightly formal, like "Good day, beautiful, how was your night?" or "I saw your profile, and I believe you are the woman God has been telling me about." That second one especially. If it sounds like a line that could be sent to a hundred different women without changing a word, that's because it probably has been.

Grammar and tone that don't add up

This isn't about someone writing in a second language. Plenty of genuine, wonderful men write English as their third or fourth language, and it's charming, not suspicious. What I'm talking about is inconsistency within the same conversation. One message reads like a formal letter, full of old-fashioned phrases like "I am highly elated to make your acquaintance," and the next reads like casual texting slang. Or his supposed profession, for example, say he claims to be an American engineer working overseas, but that doesn't match the way he writes at all. That mismatch is worth noticing, not the accent or the grammar level itself.

A fast push to move off the dating app

Dating apps monitor conversations for scam language and can shut down accounts. Scammers know this, so they want you off the app and onto WhatsApp, Telegram, Hangouts, or your personal email as fast as possible, sometimes within the first two or three messages. A genuine match might suggest moving to texting after you've built some rapport. A scammer often wants it immediately, before you've even had a real conversation, and gets a little insistent if you don't jump right to it.

Affection that escalates faster than the conversation has

By message five or six, you're his "queen," his "dear," the woman he's been "praying for." He's talking about your future together, sometimes marriage, before you've had a single video call or even learned each other's last names. Real affection usually builds alongside actual knowledge of a person. This is affection with no information behind it yet, and it moves at a speed that should feel a little too fast, because it is.

Excuses about video calls

This is one of the most reliable tells there is. Ask for a quick video call early, nothing formal, just to say hello. A real person will usually do it, even if they're a little awkward on camera. A catfish will have a reason ready: his camera is broken, his connection is too weak, he's shy on video, he'll do it "soon" and then keeps finding reasons to delay. One postponement isn't damning on its own. A pattern of postponements, especially paired with any of the other signs here, is something to be concerned about.

A profession that explains away everything inconvenient

He's an engineer on an oil rig, a surgeon on a humanitarian mission, a military contractor deployed overseas. These professions get used constantly in scam scripts because they explain, all at once, why he travels so much, why his schedule is unpredictable, why calls keep getting missed, and why he might need money later for a very believable reason. None of these are real red flags by themselves either. Plenty of real men work in exactly these fields. It's the profession combined with the other patterns on this list that matters.

Notice It, Then Verify Calmly

None of this means you panic and block the moment you spot one of these signs. One flag on its own can have an innocent explanation. What I teach my clients is to notice the pattern, stay warm and normal in how you respond, and quietly start verifying while you keep the conversation going. Ask for that video call. Do a reverse image search on his photos. Notice whether his answers to simple, specific questions stay consistent over a few days. A genuine person welcomes this, even if he's a little confused why you're asking. A scammer starts finding reasons to avoid it, delay it, or turn it around and accuse you of not trusting him.

If you want a full walkthrough of how to verify someone step by step, I wrote exactly that in How to Verify Someone You Met Online. And if you're seeing more than one or two of these signs and want a clearer read on where things stand, my Scam Probability Calculator walks you through it in a few minutes.

I've been scammed myself, years ago, and I know exactly how disorienting it feels when the warmth of a conversation and the nagging feeling that something is off show up at the same time. You don't have to choose between being trusting and being smart. You just need to know what to actually look for, and that's what these first ten messages will tell you, if you're paying attention to the right things.