Police say a so-called “Nigerian prince” scammer was a 67-year-old from Louisiana. Michael Neu, of Slidell, Louisiana, is facing 269 counts of wire fraud and one count of money laundering.
For decades, the phrase “Nigerian prince” has been used as shorthand for online fraud, reinforcing the perception that Nigeria—and Nigerians—are somehow uniquely associated with internet scams. But the modern cyberfraud industry tells a far more complicated story.
Today’s large-scale scam operations are increasingly international, technologically sophisticated, and spread across multiple regions. Investigations have documented major fraud networks operating from Southeast Asia and elsewhere, supported by technologies and digital infrastructure developed by some of the world’s most advanced companies.
An investigation by the Associated Press and PBS’s FRONTLINE examined how American technology is being incorporated into the rapidly industrializing global scam economy. The investigation found that technologies ranging from artificial intelligence to satellite internet and other digital infrastructure can be exploited by criminal networks to operate at enormous scale.
The result is a scam industry that bears little resemblance to the old stereotype of an individual fraudster sending poorly written emails while pretending to be Nigerian royalty.
From Crude Emails to Industrialized Fraud
Modern scam operations can function more like technology businesses than isolated criminal schemes.
Software available to fraud networks can help operators communicate across dozens of languages, generate automated responses, construct convincing online identities and even monitor the productivity of workers involved in scam operations.
Blockchain analysis conducted by TRM Labs at the request of AP and FRONTLINE found that scammers who purchased some of these tools received tens of millions of dollars.
Artificial intelligence has further increased the capabilities available to fraudsters.
According to the investigation, AP identified two software suites used by scammers operating from compounds in Southeast Asia. An analysis conducted with the security nonprofit C4ADS found that OpenAI’s ChatGPT played a prominent role in those systems, alongside Google’s Gemini and other artificial-intelligence models.
That does not mean the companies created their products for criminal purposes. These technologies have extensive legitimate applications, and the AP investigation reported finding no evidence that the technology companies involved were acting illegally.
Instead, the findings show how sophisticated criminal organizations can repurpose legitimate technologies.
U.S. Technology in a Global Criminal Supply Chain
Much of the public discussion about online scams focuses on the platforms where victims first encounter criminals: social networks, messaging applications and dating services.
But the technological infrastructure supporting fraud begins much farther upstream.
AI systems can help scammers translate conversations, generate persuasive messages and maintain fictional identities. Internet and communications infrastructure can enable scam operations to connect with victims across borders. Other digital tools can help criminal organizations coordinate workers and manage operations at a scale that would have been difficult only a few years ago.
This creates an uncomfortable reality: some of the same technologies driving legitimate global innovation can also increase the efficiency and reach of organized fraud.
Watchdogs cited by AP argue that AI companies, satellite internet providers and other businesses in the digital supply chain have the technical ability to make abuse of their services more difficult. The larger question is whether existing laws, regulations and commercial incentives are sufficient to push companies toward stronger enforcement.
The AP investigation found no evidence that the companies were doing anything illegal. However, it raised questions about how aggressively technology providers enforce terms of service that prohibit using their products for criminal activity.
Technology Companies Are Responding
Technology companies say they are actively attempting to prevent their products from being exploited.
OpenAI and Google told AP that they have programs designed to detect and disrupt scammers who abuse their technologies. OpenAI said that after reviewing information provided by AP, it banned three accounts that had been using its models in connection with online scams.
These actions show that technology providers can intervene when they identify abuse. They also highlight the industry’s challenge: criminal organizations continually adapt legitimate technologies to new forms of fraud.
Retiring the “Nigerian Prince” Stereotype
The transformation of cybercrime should also force a reconsideration of the language commonly used to describe internet fraud.
Calling online scammers “Nigerian princes” may once have referred to a recognizable type of advance-fee email scam, but using the phrase as a synonym for cyberfraud today obscures the global nature of the problem and unfairly associates an entire nationality with criminal activity.
Modern cybercrime is not Nigerian, American, Asian, Russian, or Caribbean in any simple sense. It is transnational.
Its participants can operate in one country, use technology developed in another, communicate with victims in a third, and move stolen money through financial systems spanning several more jurisdictions.
The more important question, therefore, is no longer where scammers come from.
It is how the global technology ecosystem is enabling fraud to operate at unprecedented speed, sophistication and scale—and what governments and technology companies are prepared to do about it.
The outdated image of the lone “Nigerian prince” should give way to a more accurate picture: organized, international criminal enterprises exploiting some of the most sophisticated technologies the modern world has produced.
