At a shrine in the borders of Accra, businesswoman and celebrity priestess that is fetish Agradaa casts spells on single brides net her behalf customers to aid them earn money.
Nana Agradaa takes 100 cedis ($26) a session from cafe guys to provide them the capacity to manipulate their victims.
We view as Nana Agraada invokes her spirits right in front of the wooden idol, covered in pictures of westerners that have been taken to her by cafe males.
She chants, spits schnapps and pours talcum powder on her behalf idols, as she demonstrates certainly one of her many popular incantations with an associate.
“He brought some white visitors to me personally,” she stated.
“The child desires them to deliver him some amount because he has got been asking for the money but they haven’t compensated the income.
“therefore i give him some detergent to get and make use of, then when he’s deploying it to shower, he can state any such thing which he wants the white woman or perhaps the white guy to accomplish for him.”
Superstition operates deep in Ghana and several believe scammers count on juju, or miracle.
“we hear that there’s some powers that are spiritual they use,” stated Dr Yankson, through the Ghana Police.
“Sometimes i am lured to think therefore, my buddy.”
2:09 Fetish Priestess Nana Agradaa casts a spell on a scammer’s western ‘client’
Cafe boys like Mohamed, Kweiku and Skidoo would be the bottom feeders in a worldwide enterprise which has spread from nearby Nigeria.
“those that have pleasure in this while the perpetrators — most of these are unemployed,” Abu Issah, acting mind of prosecutions at Ghana’s Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), told Four Corners.
“But these are typically really smart since it takes some one having an intellect to even sit down and fancy getting into this task and also to hoodwink somebody.”
The FBI reports crime that is formidable which originated from Nigeria have actually spread to a lot more than 80 countries and so are making huge amounts of dollars per year from frauds alone.
Based on EOCO’s Abu Issah, the cafe males are set victim for the syndicates that are global took hold in Ghana.
“the major guys make huge amount of money,” he stated.
“we now have Nigerian nationals along with other West nationals that are african come here — and positively they usually have their Ghanaian collaborators — and so they share a few ideas, which makes it therefore sophisticated even to locate.
“the major fishes deliver the little men on an errand to try initial tasks they give them the feedback as to the victim they’ve got in touch with, they clamp down on them for them and when.
“so they really graduate through the little guys to the major dudes in city.”
This is one way, in some instances, victims of relationship frauds are traded among crooks to be utilized in much bigger crimes, including medication trafficking and cash laundering.
Similar to in Ghana’s internet cafes, scammers gather online to trade abilities, knowledge and fake identities in a huge black colored market operating on Twitter.
In public Facebook teams, fraudsters share scripts, called “formats”, to perform their scams.
You can find day-by-day platforms for every single scam: among the list of hundreds discovered by Four Corners were army platforms, unwell mom scripts, lotto platforms, homointercourseual intercourse talk platforms, sugar daddy platforms and “trust and love” scripts.
Scammers advertise Facebook pages, taken photos of army workers and picture doctoring abilities for fabricating IDs and emergencies that are even medical.
In key teams on Twitter’s instant texting solution, WhatsApp, we discovered scammers sharing recommendations on mimicking US accents and feminine sounds.
When you look at the WhatsApp teams, crooks marketed Australian bank records to launder cash and purchasers provided to deliver gift ideas to Australian love scam victims.
Scamming will pay well and for Skidoo, it is a bottom that is brutal: West African fraudsters are using what’s owed for them.
“It could be somehow painful seeing somebody who is old sufficient to become your mother going right on through that nevertheless the important thing still continues to be, we have to survive,” he said.
” The people that are white they came down right here to colonise us, took exactly exactly what belongs to us.
“They delivered our grandfathers that are great-great, mistreated them, managed them like slaves, they did plenty of problems for them. They have done us bad before and now we think it is time to back pay them.”
In Kweiku’s flat, we find a novel, Think and Grow deep by Napoleon Hill, for which their objectives are scrawled regarding the cover that is inside
” Target — desire: i need to get 25,000 cedis $6,690 by the termination of November 2019.
“Purpose/goal: 1. purchase a land of personal.
“2. Lease a shop while making it a perfume store.
“Help me personally Lord! many thanks Lord!”
Kweiku also dreams of becoming an Afrobeats celebrity.
At a outside concert in Accra, a huge selection of young Ghanians have actually gathered to dance, pay attention to music and celebration.
Kweiku takes concise in the front of the crowd that is small perform.
“In two decades, i wish to be a large musician all over the world, a businessman and use the youth therefore I can make jobs for the youth because that may be the main thing this is certainly keeping us straight back,” he stated.
“this is exactly why we have been indulging ourselves in this scamming and all that.”
For Kweiku, love scam victims are genuine stones that are stepping their future.
“Sometimes you’ll be speaking with the individual and you will also feel shame for that individual: ‘wow, this individual, she is crying and all that,'” he stated.
“We feel shame, however you too, you’ll need cash.”
View meet with the Scammers on Four Corners at 8.30pm on ABC TV and iView tonight.
Reporter: Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop
Producer: Lesley Robinson
Digital Producer: Brigid Andersen
Digital Design: Georgina Piper