Nonfiction Student Carlos Barragán Sells Debut ‘The Yahoo Boys’ to FSG

Journalist and Nonfiction student Carlos Barragán has sold his debut book The Yahoo Boys to FSG in a pre-emptive deal. The book is a nonfiction portrait of the “Yahoo Boys,” tech-savvy young men in Nigeria who make a living conducting online romance scams, targeting lonely victims often from the United States.

The project has a personal connection for Barragán, who first began investigating the Yahoo Boys after his mother, Silvia, fell prey to one such scam. Fortunately, Barragán was able to step in before his mother sent money to her would-be suitor, a Yahoo Boy posing as an American soldier, but not before she had suffered the emotional fallout of the fraud romance.

It was this incident that launched Barragán on a mission to learn more about this growing trend in internet fraud, going so far as to travel to Lagos, Nigeria in search of answers. While he never tracked down “Brian,” the individual his mother had been messaging, he was fascinated by the circumstances that bred this new subculture pervading Nigeria and the US. “I learned how the lack of economic prospects for tech-savvy youth in Nigeria and the loneliness crisis in the Western world feed into the Yahoo Boys phenomenon,” Barragán recalled.  

This new awareness led him to publish an article about his journey in The Atavist, "The Romance Scammer on My Sofa," but he knew there was still more to the story.  Finding the right way into this complex material however, would prove more difficult.

“During my first year at Columbia, I struggled to envision the main structure of my book,” he recalled. Finally, with the encouragement of his thesis adviser, Associate Professor Wendy Walters, Barragán determined to focus his narrative on one domain, the working class neighborhood of Ikotun in Lagos, and five Yahoo Boys who call it home.  

Aiding Barragán in this new journey was another ally. “To gain their trust, I worked closely with Bukola Omoseni, a local Nigerian journalist,” explained Barragán. “Once they saw that I was genuinely interested in going beyond the stereotypes, they spoke to me more freely.”

Barragán has now made five trips to Nigeria, including three months this summer reporting and working on his book. “I slept in the neighborhood, walked its colorful and crowded streets,” he recalled. “I even attended parties where most of the young men were scammers.”

Barragán also knows there’s much more to the story than criminals and scapegoats, and noted the book will “challenge the simplistic—and often racially prejudiced—narratives about online fraud, showing the deep historical and economic forces behind these scams…without losing sight and empathy for the victims, who lose something more important than their money: their trust.”

This commitment to parity, exploring both sides and refusing simple answers, has become key to Barragán’s ethos, and a valuable tool in crossing boundaries and making connections.

“For me, good nonfiction writing is always about humility—showing up in a place with a recorder, a genuine sense of curiosity, and an open mind.”