The Long Shadow of the 'Nigerian Prince' Scam

In November 2021, Oluwaseun Medayedupin was arrested by the Nigerian police in Lagos. An investigation found that he had been pursuing "disgruntled employees" from American companies and pushing them to release ransomware on internal enterprise servers, offering a percentage of the cut if they agreed to collaborate in the attack. This was a sophisticated social engineering scheme, far more advanced than the notorious "Nigerian prince" emails that have made the country of Nigeria synonymous with scams. The origins of these types of scams may be attributed to a boom in the establishment of cybercafes during the 1990s, coinciding with falling oil prices in Nigeria and a rise in unemployment. Add in a lack of national social security, and many Nigerians were forced to seek out alternative forms of employment--physical labor; gig work; and, most notoriously, cybercrime.