THOMAS MORTON: Hi, it's Thomas.

We're in Ghana, the internet capital of Africa.

If you ever wonder what happens to computers that you

donate to one of those green e-recycling programs, this is

basically it.

Kids from the north of Ghana come to this junkyard during

the summer to break computers down for scrap and also inhale

things that will probably end up giving them cancer of the

everything.

THOMAS MORTON: Most of the computers are only worth the

dollar or two of copper you can melt out of them.

But occasionally you harvest something useful, like a hard

drive or a processor, which you can sell at the little

flea market area next to the charnel grounds.

THOMAS MORTON: Ah, OK.

If you're an especially savvy shopper, you can actually put

together a full working computer here, one ready to

connect you to the fastest internet in all of Africa.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

THOMAS MORTON: Ghana puts a lot of stock in computers.

Their internet is directly linked to Great Britain's, and

they are billboards all over the capital, extolling the

virtues of personal computing.

Ghana already is sort of the top dog of West Africa, where

most of its neighbors have been plagued by war and

poverty since independence, Ghana's had almost 50 years of

stability and growth.

Right now they're hoping foreign investment will

bolster a computer industry here, which will permanently

make them the tech capital of West Africa.

So far it hasn't quite materialized, but what has

materialized is a thriving underground economy of fraud

and witchcraft called Sakawa.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

THOMAS MORTON: Sakawa dates back to Nigeria's oil boom in

the late '70s.

Ghanaians came into the country to take jobs in the

oil fields, and the locals taught them their favorite

pastime, the pen-pal scam.

The way it works is you write to someone in America or

England, tell them about an investment opportunity you

have, or just straight up ask them for money, and they send

it to you, and that's it-- scam over.

Eventually the Nigerian government deported all the

Ghanaian guest workers back home, and they brought the

pen-pal scam with them.

Then they combined it with magic.

THOMAS MORTON: As the internet took hold in Ghana, the

pen-pal scam was adapted to email.

Then scammers started hooking up with hackers online and

incorporating things like credit card fraud into their

scams, which became

increasingly complex and lucrative.

We kind of like the idea of making a living off the back

American stupidity, so we hooked up with a Sakawa gang,

led by a young Ghanaian named Sefa.

THOMAS MORTON: And now the term just gets used--

THOMAS MORTON: --for everything.

THOMAS MORTON: Sefa's a Sakawa success story.

He's used his old scam earnings to pay for business

school and has made a nice living for himself by Ghanaian

standards, although he still has to cross a stream of urine

every night to get into his house.

Sakawa comprises any number of online scams, but the majority

boil down to two basic types.

One, you pretend you're a sexy girl, convince someone to fall

in love with you, and then they send you money.

This is called the romance scam.

The other one is, you use a stolen or forged credit card

number to buy something online.

Then you have it shipped to someone in the West who sends

you money for it.

That one's called the shopping scam.

These two scams sort of work like templates.

Once you nail down the basics of them, you can start

combining them and adding all sorts of personalized details

until your mark feels like he's in the middle of some

elaborate international business scheme and not just

emailing back and forth with an African kid on a laptop.

The thing with Sakawa is while it's essentially free money,

it isn't easy money.

To find someone gullible enough to fall for your

shtick, you have to spend hours and hours emailing

hundreds and thousands of random addresses.

THOMAS MORTON: In America, frustrated gamblers will kiss

a lucky penny or pray to Saint Bernardino for help.

Likewise, frustrated Sakawa boys turn to religion when

they're down on their luck.

Only in their case, turning to religion means driving out

into the bush and paying a juju priest

for magic email powers.

[DRUMMING]

THOMAS MORTON: I'm definitely in Africa right now.

Juju is the local term for what fancy anthropology types

call traditional African religion.

In the same way that Hinduism is actually more or less a

collection of thousands of local deities and rituals,

juju is basically an umbrella for any West African religious

practice that isn't obviously Christianity or Islam--

or Scientology.

One aspect central to all forms of juju is that the

spirit world is morally neutral.

As in the gods don't give a shit what you and I do to each

other as long as they get paid.

This makes juju perfect for Sakawa.

If you want a leg up on the competition, you get a juju

priest to barter with the spirits, and then they give

you powers.

So the point of the juju ceremony we're dancing in

isn't to win converts or teach some sort of a

lesson like in church.

It's to demonstrate the priests ins with the spirit

world and advertise his powers.

Powers like channeling a god who can't be cut by knifes.

Or channeling another god, who likes throwing eggs.

Why is he throwing eggs?

THOMAS MORTON: Why, why does he throw them?

THOMAS MORTON: Oh.

Waste of powers.

The flip side to all this is once you make a deal with the

gods, you're bound to their terms.

If you piss them off or default on payment to your

juju priest, you end up with the opposite of powers, like

bad luck or AIDS.

On top of that the payment process itself

can be pretty tricky.

THOMAS MORTON: Westerners may find stuff like magic eggs and

tampon eating a little hard to swallow, but it's serious

business over here.

And not just with like superstitious bumpkins.

Even educated, cosmopolitan folks like

Sefa believe in this.

THOMAS MORTON: Besides, is of any of this really that much

weirder than shit like communion or circumcisions?

[CRYING]

THOMAS MORTON: That part was a little rough.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

THOMAS MORTON: While Sakawa originally referred to a very

specific type of internet fraud mixed with juju, then it

went on to mean any internet crime involving witchcraft,

and now it's kind of evolved into its own full-blown

subculture.

So there's Sakawa music, Sakawa movies, Sakawa cars, a

Sakawa style of dressing.

THOMAS MORTON: Right now Ghana's in the throes of

Sakawa mania.

It's in all the papers and movie theaters.

It's bigger than rap.

I'm looking for Sakawa movies.

Oh, cool, here's number three.

If you want a glimpse at just how deeply Sakawa's penetrated

the public consciousness, check this out.

They're already up to "Sakawa Boys 8," and the series just

started last year.

We're on our way to meet a guy who makes films about Sakawa.

His name is Socrate Safo.

He's actually like the Martin Scorsese of Ghanaian internet,

fraud-based, gangster films.

The Ghanaian film industry, or Ghallywood, operates on kind

of a "more is more" principle of movie making.

They crank out hundreds of titles a year, most of them

shot on zero budget in as quickly as a couple weeks from

start to finish.

This speed doesn't do much for production values, but it does

allow them to respond to current events and to cater

their subject matter to their countrymen's exact interest.

THOMAS MORTON: Realistic.

Things drawn from real life.

-Ain't you got nothing better to do?

You asked for it.

[LAUGHTER]

THOMAS MORTON: Socrate's movie touched a nerve in national

psyche and brought the issue of Sakawa to life for a lot of

Ghanaians who otherwise wouldn't have heard of it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

THOMAS MORTON: Since being thrust into the mainstream,

though, Sakawa has drawn a huge outcry from government

officials, tabloids, and Christian preachers, whose

billboards in Accra are almost as ubiquitous as ads for

computer classes and juju priests.

THOMAS MORTON: While the furor over Sakawa dominates the

tabloids and pulpits, the focus is all on black magic

and blood debts and Sakawa boys turning each other into

goats and snakes.

None of it tackles the root of the problem, the fact that

over a third of young Ghanaians are unemployed, and

what jobs there are are filled by corrupt government

officials and their cousins.

THOMAS MORTON: Up until now the government's been more

than happy to turn a blind eye to Sakawa since it's basically

providing regular work for people that they can't.

There are also persistent rumors that Sakawa isn't just

limited to gangs of teenage delinquents, but is actually a

popular sideline among policemen, soldiers and

politicians.

THOMAS MORTON: Now that's Sakawa's threatening Ghana's

business reputation, the government's cracking down.

And them and the press have started a moral panic over it.

Just like gangsta rappers in the early '90s, Sakawa boys

have gone from objects of sort of cultural fascination to

scapegoats for all their country's ills.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

THOMAS MORTON: The end of Sakawa may not necessarily

bring juju Armageddon to Ghana, but it will leave a

bunch of angry young men without any source of steady

income, which is arguably even scarier.

On a lighter note, Ghana just discovered oil off its shore,

so maybe that'll solve all their problems.

[MUSIC PLAYING]