Master and Mugu 205sible for the large-scale dispatch of the emails, a process referred to as
“ bombing.” This is carried out mostly in ordinary internet cafés but some-
times in offices set up especially for this purpose ( John Kuti, personal
interview, February 24, 2008).^2 Daniel Jordan Smith (2007) estimates that
in 2004, around one-fifth of all the computer terminals in average-sized
Nigerian internet cafés were occupied at any given time by young people
involved in 419. For Smith’s, Hunter’s, and my own informants, 419 was a
full-time occupation, at which they worked up to twelve hours a day. The
recipients’ email addresses are sought either manually on the internet,
collected using special software or purchased from internet providers for a
small fee. If the scammers work in groups, the chairman pays the boys’ in-
ternet costs (Fred Walker, personal interview, March 4, 2008). The emails
are often sent at night because the internet cafés offer reduced nighttime
rates. The rate of response from “clients,” who are also referred to by the
Yo r u b a t e r m mugu (fool), is around 2 percent. “W hen you get a reply, it’s
70% sure that you’ll get the money,” one scammer claims (Dixon 2005:
3). The boys, however, do not necessarily themselves reply to the posi-
tive responses received from potential victims; instead, they hand them
over to more experienced group members higher up in the hierarchy. If
a scamming attempt is successful, the profit is supposed to be divided in
a ratio of seventy to thirty between the chairman and the boy. However,
the boys are often left empty-handed, as they in turn are cheated by their
bosses and never find out whether a “client” they landed was successfully
defrauded. For this reason, sooner or later the boys try to defraud “clients”
themselves and go into business on their own.
The different types of scamming genres are known as formats. Most
of the scammers work with formats that they did not invent themselves.
The scammers I contacted, who claimed to have composed their email
letters themselves, provided terse and vague replies to my question about
how they came up with ideas for new formats: “through normal conver-
sation,” or “ideas are gotten from all walks of life” (Fred Walker, email,
February 25, 2008). In fact, the formats circulate among the scammers
and are updated, adapted to new circumstances, and constantly modified
as to their details. This also explains the significant qualitative discrepan-
cies observed in the emails. Some betray major formal weaknesses and