Carlos Barragán Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Carlos Barragán is a Spanish published author.

In addition to being a writer, he works as a researcher and a reporter for The New York Times based out of Madrid. Previously he worked as a reporter at El Confidencial. He then went on to attend Columbia University and get his MFA in nonfiction writing.

His first book is The Yahoo Boys by Carlos Barragán.

The Yahoo Boys: Real Life with the Love Scammers of Lagos is a 2026 book by Carlos Barragán. If you’re a fan of nonfiction and love diving into interest topics, this is likely a great book for you. It showcases the finest immersion journalism as the author focuses on the topic of romance scamming in a particular location– in this instance, Lagos, Nigeria.

Four young romance scammers in Lagos, Nigeria are the center of this story as Carlos delves into the process and looks at not only how they scam but the reasons that they do it, and the consequential moral dilemmas that they run into along the way.

Journalist Carlos Barragán gets involved with this topic in a completely unique way because one of his family members was directly affected by a scam. It turns out that his mother had started up contact with a stranger– but she didn’t believe them to be a stranger. This is someone that she believed that she had genuinely gotten to know. Carlos’s mother was emailing back and forth with someone who presented as a handsome American soldier.

Not only was this figure someone she was in contact with, she was falling for him too. Carlos’s mother had become embroiled in a classic romance scam while also being lured by riches– the soldier had told her that he would send some gold bars to her apartment in Madrid. Her son was concerned and had experienced firsthand now the toll on people that comes with online romance fraud.

Carlos traces the emails and finds that they lead to an IP address in Nigeria. Then he decides to pick up to go to Lagos so that he can track down the person who scammed his mother. The last thing that he expected to happen was to find a larger story.

Once the author gets to the largest city of Africa, he starts to grasp the scope of this industry. He finds himself in a poor and crowded neighborhood located in the middle of the city. There he finds not hundreds but thousands of young men who are wrapped up in the market of romance scamming– one of the most effective ways to get money in a place where money is not always easy to come by.

The men who did this even have a nickname for themselves– they call themselves the ‘Yahoo Boys’. They work relentlessly and through their efforts, every year they are able to successfully steal millions of dollars from victims overseas. These people are frequently made vulnerable with their loneliness, and their ability to be targeted and milked for money has helped to generate a huge local economy for those in Lagos– all pulled off through their phones.

Most people have become familiar with the world of romance scamming through television shows such as Catfish or the ever-popular and dramatic 90 Day Fiance. Inside The Yahoo Boys, the author focuses on the lives of four specific Yahoo Boys and gets a little deeper into the details of who they are and why they choose to participate in this economy.

The reader will encounter Biggy and Chibuike, who are tempted to make fast money but also struggling with the morality of it. There is also Richie, who has worked in the industry for some time but also has to contend with his personal belief that he caused the death of a woman in Kentucky who had been his target for years. Then there is Azeez, a tailor’s apprentice who is caught between the economic crisis in Nigeria and the pull of crime.

While being a Yahoo Boy also comes with its share of moral crises, there also is a lure to it. Some Yahoo Boys become famous in a way, stealing so much money that they are able to purchase cars and houses for themselves. Still others are able to cash out and scam a victim successfully, but are dependent on drugs and lose all the money they make eventually.

The author follows along with the up and down nature of these boys’ pursuit of fortune and through it is able to put into words much of the world that they live in. He finds out about the psychological tactics that they get really good at, peers at the economic realities that motivate them, and details the moral dilemmas they run into as a result of being active scammers.

What is interesting about this nonfiction book is that the author successfully resists the temptation to cast these people into villainous or demonic roles. Empathetic, real, and completely fascinating, this book is able to show readers the real faces and people behind these faceless scammers and show them the humans behind them. This is a worldwide phenomenon, one that exposes the loneliness in the West and the poverty in Nigeria and how they really reflect two sides of one coin.

The Yahoo Boys: Real Life with the Love Scammers of Lagos outlines what it is going to show the reader and then delivers. It’s so easy to deride the scammers for doing something that is considered wrong, but if you were born in Nigeria and grew up in this economy, you may find yourself facing the very struggles and dilemmas that the Yahoo Boys do.

Do you stick to your morality and live in poverty, or do you acknowledge that the need for money is the top priority and stealing money from others to survive is simply an option that is too tempting to refuse?

This is an endlessly interesting book that you need to have as part of your book collection. Check out one of the most engaging nonfiction works to come out in a while by getting a copy of The Yahoo Boys by Carlos Barragán.