Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception and the Real Lives of Nigeria’s Romance Scammers by Carlos Barragán is a disturbing book that stemmed from the author’s attempts to find the Nigerian man who had conned his well-educated, confident Spanish mother online for months. Barragán sets out to understand how these “Yahoo Boys”, so named because they develop so many online identities, prey on lonely white Americans, and why those Americans fall for the ruse. He interviews several Yahoo Boys, exploring their backgrounds and how they fell into scamming, and even tracks down a few of their victims. What emerges is the depiction of surprisingly complex economic and social forces that combine to bind scammer and victim together in a depressing cycle. Barragán has compassion for everyone involved, persuasively identifying chronic loneliness, poverty, social media and government corruption as the larger forces behind this phenomenon. A very interesting, if sad, read.