The Dark Night Online | inside the MIND OF A CRIMINAL - the Sakawa & Cafe boys of Ghana.
In the dark of night online I am working a case out of Europe.
A Ghanian scammer has stolen the identity of a real-life US Armed forces soldier to romance scam a European doctor.
We look inside the MIND OF A CRIMINAL - the Sakawa & Cafe boys of Ghana. Although the Sakawa boys dates back more than 5-years and has evolved, the ideology will be new to most people.
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With a complex and detailed online persona based on our US soldier, developed to appear real, our criminal is a world class researcher and actor. He is an organised criminal, part of a team. A digital velociraptor, the ultimate predator who can assume any identity from the digital savannah on which he preys.
If this criminal is an archetypical antagonistic devil, then I am his angelic protagonist opponent. We have the same kinds of skills, but I am his ultimate predator, and his crime will not survive me. We are opposites. His goal is to deceive. Mine is transparency. His goal to take, mine to return. His goal to hurt, my goal to heal. To this man, everyone is a ritual sacrifice. To me, he is a lost son of Africa who needs to be guided back to honour, through a correctional facility.
His accomplices include Mark Zuckerberg, with thanks to the lack of identity confirmation and poor security. Mark is a great friend of the scammer and beloved in the Ghanian community.
And so is the cryptocurrency exchange, which supports money laundering by making it too difficult for victims to report criminals like him, routinely telling victims to get a lawyer, obstructing victims, and giving the criminal time to get away clean.
From my investigation into the criminal, we gain a sense of a criminal profile.
We also learn that where there is poverty, there is crime.
Your name is Kawaku Kabena (fictional name).
You call yourself one of the Sakawa boys, combining illegal practices with ritual.
The term or word Sakawa is a Hausa word which means "putting inside, how to make money". You first saw the Sakawa lifestyle in the work of Ghanaian filmmaker Socrate Safo. Your hero. Bling and Witchcraft. The Sakawa is the new cyberpunk, the West African Juju priest who has adapted their practices to the online age.
You are a lion, and lions eat any lion that comes into their territory. This is the law of the jungle. You will be prey or you will become a predator. The best online predator uses digital camouflage to blend into surroundings.
Highly intelligent, you are pissed off at Western exploitation of your country. Westerners raped Africa. They are only losing a few dollars. They deserve to pay you for all your culture has lost. You hate westerners. Make them pay.
In Ghana, where you live, it is survival of the fittest. The moral law of the jungle. It is YOU vs EVERYONE. To survive by any means is virtue.
Life is so bad, going to prison would be a luxury resort. You would love to go to school in jail. There you could learn new tricks from even more accomplished 'survivors', to get back out and exploit the westerner.
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Article by
GLYN MACLEAN
Founder TDNO