Master and Mugu 221date of going to Lagos to hook me up with these guys. (personal interview,
February 24, 2008)Some scammers are ashamed of their behavior and take care to ensure
that nobody outside the scammer networks finds out how the money is
earned. “I don’t really enjoy the game of scam,” wrote “Vanity” in an email
interview with R ick Hunter (2011: 6), and went on to explain: “Don’t think
that scammers don’t have a sense of good morals. W hen you see a cheat,
there is always something that drove him/her to the crime.” Davis Pui
sent me the following email:
Please tell the world that con artists are not devils or heartless or whatever
bad name that they call us. We are human like each and every one of them,
but life has treated us the way we do not have a choice. It is painful to let
you know that most of us are university graduates without job or any form
or means to survive without doing this. Ask me, will it not be better if we
scam people without using any gun on them? (February 15, 2008)At least one scammer, with whom I exchanged emails, had sympathy
for his victims; however, most do not share this feeling. Scammers “have
the belief that white men are stupid and greedy. They say the American
guy has a good life. There’s this belief that for every dollar they lose, the
A merican government will pay them back in some way” (Samuel, quoted
in Dixon 2005: 1). Scammers also try to justify their criminal activities
in light of colonial and postcolonial power relations. Scamming is thus
labeled “retribution” for the atrocities Africans suffered at the hands of
white slavers and colonizers or through the current postcolonial terms
of trade. “W hite people used our old fathers as... slaves and took away
all our money and resources, thinking we will not revenge,” a scammer
wrote me, calling himself Angelina Davis (!). He went on to say, “There we
are today. I have made a lot of money, and will make more” (February 15,
2008). Another scammer elaborates on this argument:
Tell your fellow white that the reparation due to Africa for 300 years of
rape and violation will be paid in full either by hook or by crook, from this
generation or the next. And unless the white man confesses and takes a
positive proactive action for restitution, he can never be free. This is the
ideology of the scammers. Would you want to know how Europe and
A merica underdeveloped A frica? Would you want to know more about
the perennial debt burden of the third world countries and the ref USl of