Internet Scamming in Ghana
March 1, 2013
4,998,503
38,918
7,780
0.93%
Search the Record
IndexedEvery word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
Vice Episodes Around March 1, 2013
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
20:31Now PlayingInternet Scamming in Ghana
YouTube Description
as posted by the channelFraudsters in Ghana show us how they use internet scams to steal thousands of dollars from unsuspecting victims all over the globe.
--
While Nigeria's 401 scammers may have written the book on West African internet fraud, their shtick looks like Compuserve compared to what's going on in Ghana. Unsatisfied with the meager winnings from emailing thousands of random Westerners in hopes of convincing one poor sap they're the treasurer of the Ivory Coast, Ghana's scammers decided to stack the odds in their favor the old-fashioned way—witchcraft.
Taking a page from cyberpunk, traditional West African Juju priests adapted their services to the needs of the information age and started leading down-on-their-luck internet scammers through strange and costly rituals designed to increase their powers of persuasion and make their emails irresistible to greedy Americans. And so "Sakawa" was born.
Now not only is Sakawa Ghana's most popular youth activity and one of its biggest underground economies, it's a full-blown national phenomenon. Sakawa has its own tunes, clothing brands, Sakawasploitation flicks, and even a metastatic backlash from Christian preachers and the press. When we were in Accra over the summer it was impossible to walk more than 10 feet without seeing the word Sakawa in blood-red Misfits letters on a poster or tabloid, often accompanied by bone-chilling horrors of the photoshopped variety.
The government is freaked out because Sakawa is threatening Ghana's business reputation, the Christians are freaked out because they're losing money to the Juju priests, the press is freaked out because being freaked out is what sells papers, and the public is freaked out because their government, preacher, and media are all telling them they should be. All the while the Sakawa boys are living the high life and racking up debts to the spirit world, just waiting for the axe to fall.
Hosted by Thomas Morton | Originally released in 2011 at
Follow Thomas on Twitter here
Check out the Best of VICE here
Subscribe to VICE here!
Check out our full video catalog
Videos, daily editorial and more
Like VICE on Facebook
Follow VICE on Twitter
Read our tumblr
Guests & Subjects Covered
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.