The United States and Nigeria plan to go after the financial networks behind sextortion and romance scams, the US Embassy in Abuja said on Monday after a visit by a senior State Department official.
Michael Gonzales, the US deputy assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, met officials of the EFCC, the Office of the National Security Adviser, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) and the Nigeria Police Force during Nigeria’s Cybercrime Awareness Week, the embassy said in a statement.
The FBI identifies Nigeria and other parts of West Africa, along with Southeast Asia, as bases for some of the most prevalent sextortion networks, the statement said. The US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received more than 50,000 reports of financially motivated sextortion in 2025, about 137 a day.
The FBI’s legal attaché office at the embassy has worked with the EFCC on 41 extraditions since 2022, five of them this year, according to the statement. Between 2012 and 2021, the two countries recorded four arrests and five extraditions.
In August, Nigeria extradited two suspects to the US to face charges in separate sextortion cases involving American minors who died by suicide.
Gonzales called for “the process to become faster, more routine and proactive, with greater emphasis on dismantling criminal networks rather than pursuing individual suspects alone.”
The next phase of cooperation will focus on faster information sharing between US and Nigerian agencies, quicker use of cyber and financial intelligence in investigations, public awareness of sextortion and romance scams, and Nigeria’s ability to investigate, prosecute and report cybercrime, the embassy said.
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