This Tuesday, March 12, Le Parisien revealed the arrest of a 27-year-old man who admitted to having killed his wife “for love” for a mistress.
Nicolas H. explained to investigators that he had acted because he had fallen in love with a certain Béatrice Leroux, a young interlocutor he met virtually who turned out to be "a grazer", which the suspect was unaware of.
“Stalkers” are scammers who try to extract money over the Internet.
Although they can come from anywhere in the world, the vast majority of networks operating in France come from West Africa.
Called Nigerian-style scam because of its origin, this phenomenon existed before the widespread use of the Internet.
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It is inspired by an 18th-century French criminal practice, the “Letter from Jerusalem,” in which a swindler writes to rich strangers, claims to have been dispossessed of a treasure and solicits his victim's help to recover it.
The victim must then advance funds in exchange for the promise of compensation, which never arrives.
The Nigerian scammers decided to reproduce this scam first by mail, then by email, which earned them the nickname “Yahoo boys”, in reference to their favorite email box.
A scam from internet cafes
In Ivory Coast, they are called “grazers” in reference to the fact of feeding without having to make any effort, like a sheep in a meadow.
There, “browsing is carried out mainly between 15 and 35 years of age”, indicated the gendarmerie in a message warning against these cybercriminals dating from 2021. These are young men who rarely go to school and are often unemployed.
“They go to internet cafes because they can't afford their own computer or a stable internet connection.
In these places a sociability of cybercriminals is created who will train each other by giving each other advice,” Nahema Hanafi, professor of History at the University of Angers and specialist on the subject, tells France 3.
The financial impact of these scams is very difficult to assess because the number of complaints is low.
Many victims are ashamed of having been scammed and knowing that their money has gone abroad deters them from filing a complaint.
It is also possible that the reported harm is well below reality.
Fake identity, false email address and stolen photos
Several techniques are put in place by grazers to extract money from their victims, based on the same mechanism.
They all rely on the creation of a false identity, with photos stolen from the Internet and a false email address.
All consist of implementing psychological manipulation methods for the purposes of fraud.
The grazer exchanges over the long term to create a relationship of trust, even love between him and his victim and takes the opportunity to ask his victim for financial assistance to help a sick relative or buy plane tickets to join them.
The scammers also often use fake accommodation rentals to obtain the victim's identity documents and open bank accounts in their name to collect the money from their scams.