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Cybercriminals (Yahoo Boys) and Society: Hustle Kingdoms, Occult Economies, and the Colonial Politics of Digital Fraud

Coming Soon Cybercriminals (Yahoo Boys) and Society: Hustle Kingdoms, Occult Economies, and the Colonial Politics of Digital Fraud

Cybercriminals (Yahoo Boys) and Society: Hustle Kingdoms, Occult Economies, and the Colonial Politics of Digital Fraud

Author: Suleman Lazarus
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781032947631
Published In: August 2026
Format: Paperback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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This book offers a comprehensive sociological account of cyber-enabled fraud in Africa south of the Sahara, centred on Nigeria but extending across Ghana, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Jamaica, and Southeast Asia. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic research, conviction case files, court documents, interviews, and cultural analysis of Afrobeats music, it examines online fraud not as isolated wrongdoing but as a patterned social response to postcolonial inequality, blocked mobility, and institutional failure.

The book introduces the Tripartite Cybercrime Framework, a motivation-centred typology that classifies cybercrime as socio-economic, psychosocial, or geopolitical, shifting attention from technical mechanisms to underlying purpose. It also develops the concept of Hustle Kingdoms, underground fraud "academies" that mimic schooling while binding learners through spiritual oaths, psychological pressure, and economic dependency, complicating simple victim–offender binaries. Across comparative chapters, the book connects cultural repertoires of online fraud in Africa south of the Sahara to Southeast Asian scam compounds and argues that coercion should be understood as a spectrum, from overt confinement to socially embedded and spiritually enforced control. It concludes with clear policy and safeguarding implications for prevention, policing, sentencing, and victim support.

This book will be of interest to criminologists and sociologists studying cybercrime, fraud and financial crime, and informal economies. It will also be useful reading for scholars of cultural studies, social psychology, and African studies. It will also be valuable for policymakers and practitioners working on cybercrime prevention.

Introduction and Roadmap

PART I: FRAMING THE TERRAIN

1. Geographies of Cybercrime: Postcolonial Inequalities and the Spatial Production of Cybercriminals

2. The Tripartite Cybercrime Framework and the Particularities of Cybercrime in Nigeria

3. From Student Activism to Global Fraud: The Evolution of Nigerian Confraternities and Their Role in Cybercrime

PART II: INSTITUTIONS AND INFRASTRUCTURES OF CYBERCRIMINAL FORMATION

4. Hustle Kingdoms as Structural Strain? Alternative Institutions of Deviant Learning in Anglophone West Africa

5. Beyond Voluntary Deviance: Spiritual Coercion and the Victim Offender Overlap in Hustle Kingdoms

6. Do Mothers' Hands Both Bless and Bind? An Ethnographic Account of Yahoo Boys' Mothers' Associations (AYBM)

7. Is the Spirit World the Base of the Superstructure? Empirical Evidence for Inverting Orthodox Marxism in Nigerian Occult Economies

PART III: OFFENCES, SCRIPTS, AND NETWORKED OPERATIONS

8. Romance in Ruins and the Hustler’s Gospel of Love and Lies

9. United States v. Olugbenga Lawal: Romance Fraud, Business Email Compromise, and Transnational Money Laundering

10. Gendered Pathways to Deviance? Comparing Nigerian Male Online Fraudsters (Yahoo Boys) and Female Trafficked Sex Workers (Ashawo)

PART IV: CULTURAL GRAMMARS AND REGIONAL VARIANTS

11. Afrobeats and the Cultural Politics of Online Fraud (2007 to 2025)

12. Codes of Retaliation and Anti-Colonial Discourses in Digital Fraud: Ghana, Nigeria, and Jamaica

13. A Comparative Analysis of Internet Fraudsters: Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, and Côte d'Ivoire

PART V: GLOBAL SYNTHESIS

14. A Comparative Sociology of Fraud Factories and Cybercrime Academies: Southeast Asia and West Africa

PART VI: CONCLUSION

15. Conclusion

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