Carlos Barragán – författare

A NEW YORK TIMES MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026 'AFFECTING' TELEGRAPH'ENGROSSING' ECONOMIST'MIRACULOUS' WIRED'MORE THAN CRIME REPORTAGE' WALL STREET JOURNALWhen his mother fell for an 'American soldier' who promised to send gold bars to their Madrid apartment, Carlos Barragán found himself with an unexpected window into the shadowy world of online romance fraud. He set off on a journey to find his mother's scammer, but what he discovered was much bigger: a world of young Nigerian men who drag themselves out of destitution by catfishing lonely hearts in the US and Europe, in the process building a dizzying local economy from their phones.The Yahoo Boys follows four scammers in Ikotun - one of Lagos's poorest neighbourhoods, a scant ten miles from the gleaming heart of the megacity. Through their twisting fortunes, Barragán discovers the psychological tactics they perfect, the economic desperation that drives them, and the moral dilemmas they face. A work of radical empathy, this astonishing narrative nonfiction debut reveals the human face behind a global phenomenon, and shows how isolation in the West and poverty in Nigeria are just two sides of the same screen.'BARRAGÁN WRITES WITH IMPECCABLE EMPATHY . . . COMPELLINGLY READABLE' BARBARA DEMICK'ASTONISHING . . . I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN. A TOUR DE FORCE' JON LEE ANDERSON 'BOTH INTIMATELY PERSONAL AND GLOBALLY RELEVANT' DIPO FALOYIN'AN ENVIABLE FEAT OF REPORTAGE AND WRITING - AS INTREPID AS IT IS SYMPATHETIC' GIDEON LEWIS-KRAUS

A New York Times Most Anticipated Nonfiction Book of 2026A People Best Book of June | A USA Today Most Anticipated Summer Read"e;What [Barragan has] produced feels miraculous: journalism that is simultaneously funny, devastating, wildly intimate, and righteous without veering into moralism."e; -Kate Knibbs, Wired (Book Club Pick)"e;I have found few books lately as immediately compelling as Barragan's, and as a reader, I could not put it down . . . The Yahoo Boys is a tour-de-force."e; -Jon Lee AndersonAn astonishing work of immersion journalism about four young romance scammers in Lagos, Nigeria, exploring how and why they scam, and the moral dilemmas they faceWhen his mother started emailing with a handsome American soldier who promised to send gold bars to her Madrid apartment, the journalist Carlos Barragan came face to face with the human toll of online romance fraud. After tracing the emails to an IP address in Nigeria, he set off on a journey to Lagos to find his mother's scammer, where he stumbled on a much bigger story. There, in a crowded and impoverished neighborhood in the midst of Africa's largest city, he encountered thousands of young men engaged in romance scamming. They call themselves "e;Yahoo Boys,"e; and each year they catfish millions of dollars from lonely victims overseas, building a dizzying local economy from their phones.In this astonishing work of immersion journalism, Barragan takes us inside the lives of four of the Yahoo Boys of Lagos. We meet Biggy and Chibuike, each struggling with the temptations of fast money; Azeez, a tailor's apprentice caught between the lure of crime and Nigeria's economic crisis; and Richie, who is convinced that he's responsible for the death of a woman in Kentucky he manipulated online for years. Some Yahoo Boys attain the status of folk heroes, buying houses and cars with the money they make, while others become dependent on drugs and "e;cash out"e;-successfully scam a victim-only to lose it all.Through the Yahoo Boys' twisting fortunes, Barragan discovers the psychological tactics they perfect, the brutal economic realities that drive them, and the moral dilemmas they confront. A work of radical empathy, this book reveals the human face behind a global phenomenon, and shows how loneliness in the West and poverty in Nigeria are two sides of the same screen.