A Scammers video production – Internet Scamming in Ghana:
Fraudsters in Ghana show us how they use internet scams to steal thousands of dollars from unsuspecting victims all over the globe.
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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.
Hosted by Thomas Morton | Originally released in 2011 at http://vice.com
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Fraud Prevention Tip: New-age Fraud Prevention Systems – Whereby technology has brought its own set of scams it has also provided a fighting tool against such risks. From manual searches and checks to automated AI based fraud prevention software. These 3rd party s/w providers give an array of scam busting options (real-time identity verification, document verification, background checks) that you can add to your arsenal to protect your business interests. The digital KYC services that these providers give are mostly foolproof and given the recording of any transactions they can be your proof of purchase in case of false charge-backs.