VICE Japan

• 海外

ガーナがアフリカにおけるインターネット中心地だと聞いてもピンと来ない人は多いだろう。しかし同地は世界でも有数の、メールやショッピングサービス経由でのオンライン詐欺が盛んな地域だ。

周辺国と比べても政治的に安定したガーナは、テクノロジーの恩恵を受けるだけのインフラが整っている。パソコンや携帯電話、そしてそれらを駆使した犯罪集団が育つにはうってつけの場所だった。

サカワと呼ばれる連中は、最先端テクノロジーと伝統的な呪術信仰を右往左往しながらも、今日もカモを探すべくせっせとメール作成に勤しんでいる。

Fraudsters in Ghana show us how they use internet scams to steal thousands of dollars from unsuspecting victims all over the globe.

While Nigeria's 401 scammers may have written the book on West African internet fraud, their shtick looks like Compuserve compared to what's going on in Ghana. Unsatisfied with the meager winnings from emailing thousands of random Westerners in hopes of convincing one poor sap they're the treasurer of the Ivory Coast, Ghana's scammers decided to stack the odds in their favor the old-fashioned way—witchcraft.

Taking a page from cyberpunk, traditional West African Juju priests adapted their services to the needs of the information age and started leading down-on-their-luck internet scammers through strange and costly rituals designed to increase their powers of persuasion and make their emails irresistible to greedy Americans. And so "Sakawa" was born.

Now not only is Sakawa Ghana's most popular youth activity and one of its biggest underground economies, it's a full-blown national phenomenon. Sakawa has its own tunes, clothing brands, Sakawasploitation flicks, and even a metastatic backlash from Christian preachers and the press. When we were in Accra over the summer it was impossible to walk more than 10 feet without seeing the word Sakawa in blood-red Misfits letters on a poster or tabloid, often accompanied by bone-chilling horrors of the photoshopped variety.

The government is freaked out because Sakawa is threatening Ghana's business reputation, the Christians are freaked out because they're losing money to the Juju priests, the press is freaked out because being freaked out is what sells papers, and the public is freaked out because their government, preacher, and media are all telling them they should be. All the while the Sakawa boys are living the high life and racking up debts to the spirit world, just waiting for the axe to fall.

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