Guys Wanna Pay Me Money To Get Naked On Camera Why?
Encounter the scammers: Could this be your online lover?
Updated
These are the human foot soldiers in a global scamming enterprise that's breaking hearts and stealing billions of dollars.
In a tiny flat in Ghana, in west Africa, an aspiring entrepreneur trawls Facebook for divorced and widowed women on the other side of the globe.
The 27-yr-onetime, who calls himself Kweiku, is searching for 'clients' — scammer parlance for victims who can be bamboozled online into sending money.
For Kweiku, romance scams are a transaction, not a crime.
"A client is somebody, a business partner who brings you lot money, that'due south why you use the word client," he told 4 Corners.
"Some are divorced and some — their husbands are at present dead."
Kweiku sells perfume on the streets of Ghana'due south capital, Accra, to maintain a meagre income between Western Union transfers from a woman he seduces online.
He poses as a US soldier chosen 'Johnny', an online persona built on stolen photos, faux ID and stock scripts with storylines about urgent emergencies that tin be solved with greenbacks.
"Sometimes I'm in Palestine, sometimes I'm in Republic of iraq and we are helping continue peace in that country considering there's a war going on," he said.
"That's my main occupation — online. I desire somebody to be my lover, my fiance."
Kweiku'due south current target is a Mexican widow in the US. He considers her a prize client.
"She tin can't really hear that I don't accept an American accent because she's not really a white person," he said.
"She doesn't have the instruction and she's not fluent in English language, so I was lucky plenty to meet somebody who wasn't.
"I proposed to her, and we were getting forth but I wanted some capital, so I asked her for money. In all, I think she sent me about $two,000."
While the Four Corners team is filming, Kweiku returns a missed video phone call from the woman and blocks his webcam with his finger then she can't encounter him.
"I'm trying to video conversation with you so you lot tin see me only the photographic camera is not working properly," he tells her in a unpleasing American accent.
The conversation switches gears between declarations of honey, sex talk and insistent requests for gifts and coin.
"I really want to come around this Christmas and see yous," he says.
"What near the aeroplane ticket?" the woman asks.
"My friend booked the flight ticket and I'm not hearing from my friend anymore. Information technology's really difficult times hither baby," he tells her.
As the talk turns intimate, Kweiku shuts the telephone call downwards.
"She was in bed at present, wanting to have sexual practice, and she was trying to get naked and all that," he said.
"She wanted to see me. Sometimes I feel like, wow, this lady, she'due south really in some misery or pain because she really wants to see me and she tin't run into me.
"She's falling in love with the vocalisation because it's the same phonation that I proposed to her, it'southward the same voice that I tell her she's beautiful and it's the aforementioned voice when I'm making dear to her."
Kweiku's friend 'Skidoo' introduced him to the scamming concern. He believes he knows the way to a woman'southward heart and her bank account.
"Women like men who are caring," Skidoo said.
"If you're not giving them money, you e'er call them: 'How you doing? I wanted to check on you. Have y'all eaten all the stuffs?' Similar pampering that mode.
"She'due south online looking for a partner. Maybe it's been long since she met someone like that, it's been a long time since someone pampered her. It'south been long since someone told her sugariness things, you understand."
In a packed internet cafe in a commercial town west of Accra, we find teenage boys and young men in front of every screen, logged in on dating sites under names like Jessica, Mary and Jennifer.
The teenagers, known in Ghana as 'buffet boys' or 'browsers', are searching for center-aged and elderly men in the U.s., Commonwealth of australia and Canada, and luring them to chat on Google Hangouts.
Mohamed, 19, is exchanging messages online with a grey-haired human in Commonwealth of australia.
"We just come up hither, we only get some coin from the white mans to get some food to eat," he said.
"Some of them tin give you $US2,000, mayhap you lot tell him y'all want $US5,000 or five,000 pounds or $five,000 Australian."
"Wanna play now? I'm horny," the Australian human writes to him. "Wife is late home this night, I will be here waiting for you."
"He wants to play video cam with me to do fun, sexual activity stuff and other things," Mohamed tells Four Corners.
"He shows me himself naked, full naked. And I will make sure to make him happy, like he will fall in dear with me."
Mohamed tells Iv Corners he has been doing this since he was 16 to brand a living, or sometimes simply to earn credit for his phone.
"Hello babe, just got home and have topped you upwardly with 90 cedis ($24)," the Australian writes. "That should cover for united states to play once more too. cant expect for you to come on line."
Each time they "play", Mohamed tells his targets his webcam is broken and instead sends videos of the woman he claims to be.
The Australian man has been sending webcam equipment to Ghana so he can finally see and hear her live.
"Did you get the mic I sent?" the Australian writes. "No more than playing me a video... I idea nosotros were in the beginning of something long term."
Information technology'southward fourth dimension for Mohamed to discover a new client.
Ghana has more phones than people. With high youth unemployment and cheap internet, online fraud is booming.
"It'south widespread," says Republic of ghana Police cybercrime unit managing director Dr Herbert Gustav Yankson. "It's lucrative, low-risk and it'south increasing every mean solar day."
Entrepreneurs are capitalising on the scam industry.
At a shrine on the outskirts of Accra, businesswoman and celebrity fetish priestess Nana Agradaa casts spells for her customers to help them make money.
Nana Agradaa takes 100 cedis ($26) a session from cafe boys to evangelize them the ability to manipulate their victims.
We watch as Nana Agraada invokes her spirits in front of a wooden idol, covered in photos of westerners which accept been brought to her by buffet boys.
She chants, spits schnapps and pours talcum pulverisation on her idols, as she demonstrates 1 of her well-nigh pop incantations with an assistant.
"He brought some white people to me," she said.
"The boy wants them to send him some amount because he has been asking for money merely they have not paid the money.
"And so I give him some lather to go and utilise, then when he'due south using it to bath, he will say anything that he wants the white lady or the white homo to exercise for him."
Superstition runs deep in Ghana and many believe scammers rely on juju, or magic.
"I hear that there is some spiritual powers that they use," said Dr Yankson, from the Ghana Constabulary.
"Sometimes I'one thousand tempted to believe so, my friend."
Buffet boys similar Mohamed, Kweiku and Skidoo are the bottom feeders in a global enterprise which has spread from nearby Nigeria.
"Those who indulge in this every bit the perpetrators — most of them are unemployed," Abu Issah, acting head of prosecutions at Ghana's Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), told Four Corners.
"But they are very intelligent because information technology takes someone with an intellect to sit down and even fancy how to become into this activity and to hoodwink someone."
The FBI reports formidable crime organisations which originated in Nigeria accept spread to more than than fourscore countries and are making billions of dollars a yr from scams alone.
According to EOCO's Abu Issah, the buffet boys are fix prey for the global syndicates which have taken hold in Ghana.
"The large guys make millions of dollars," he said.
"Nosotros take Nigerian nationals and other Westward African nationals who come here — and definitely they accept their Ghanaian collaborators — and they share ideas, making it so sophisticated even to track down.
"The big fishes ship the small-scale boys on an errand to undertake preliminary activities for them and when they requite them the feedback every bit to the victim they've got in touch with, they clamp down on them.
"So they graduate from the lilliputian boys to the big guys in town."
This is how, in some cases, victims of romance scams are traded amid criminals to be used in much larger crimes, including drug trafficking and coin laundering.
Just like in Ghana's net cafes, scammers gather online to trade skills, knowledge and faux identities in a vast blackness market operating on Facebook.
In public Facebook groups, fraudsters share scripts, called "formats", to run their scams.
At that place are twenty-four hours-by-day formats for every scam: amid the hundreds found by Four Corners were military formats, sick mother scripts, lotto formats, gay sex chat formats, sugar daddy formats and "trust and honey" scripts.
Scammers advertise Facebook profiles, stolen photos of military machine personnel and photo doctoring skills for fabricating IDs and even medical emergencies.
In secret groups on Facebook's instant messaging service, WhatsApp, we plant scammers sharing tips on mimicking American accents and female voices.
In the WhatsApp groups, criminals advertised Australian depository financial institution accounts to wash money and buyers offered to ship gifts to Australian romance scam victims.
Scamming can pay well and for Skidoo, it'due south a brutal bottom line: W African fraudsters are taking what is owed to them.
"It might exist somehow painful seeing someone who is old enough to be your mother going through that but the bottom line nevertheless remains, we've got to survive," he said.
"The white people, they came down here to colonise us, took what belongs to us.
"They sent our great-great grandfathers there, mistreated them, treated them like slaves, they did a lot of harm to them. They've done us bad before and nosotros recall information technology's fourth dimension to pay them back."
In Kweiku's flat, we notice a volume, Recall and Grow Rich past Napoleon Colina, in which his goals are scrawled on the inside cover:
"Target — desire: I must get 25,000 cedis [$six,690] by the end of November 2019.
"Purpose/goal: ane. Buy a country of my own.
"2. Rent a store and make it a perfume shop.
"Help me Lord! Give thanks y'all Lord!"
Kweiku also dreams of becoming an Afrobeats star.
At an outdoor concert in Accra, hundreds of young Ghanians have gathered to dance, heed to music and party.
Kweiku takes to the stage in front of a small-scale crowd to perform.
"In 20 years, I want to get a large musician worldwide, a man of affairs and employ the youth so I can create jobs for the youth because that is the main affair that is holding us dorsum," he said.
"That's why we are indulging ourselves in this scamming and all that."
For Kweiku, romance scam victims are legitimate stepping stones to his hereafter.
"Sometimes you volition be talking to the person and you tin can fifty-fifty feel pity for that person: 'wow, this person, she's crying and all that,'" he said.
"We feel pity, but you as well, you need money."
Sentry Meet the Scammers on 4 Corners tonight at 8.30pm on ABC Television set and iView.
Credits
Reporter: Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop
Producer: Lesley Robinson
Digital Producer: Brigid Andersen
Digital Design: Georgina Piper
Topics: fraud-and-corporate-crime, cyberspace-culture, republic of ghana
First posted
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-11/ghana-meet-the-scammers/10785676
Posted by: hortonextob1973.blogspot.com
0 Response to "Guys Wanna Pay Me Money To Get Naked On Camera Why?"
Post a Comment