SCHOOL WHERE TEENS LEARN TO SCAM LONELY BRITISH
Armed with computers, posh voices and stolen internet identities, the sinister band of men who pose as eligible suitors to con victims out of their life savings
WARMLY welcomed by theWalesWorld Cup rugby squad after arriving to wish them luck in Tokyo, Prince Charles has painful memories of the sport.A bully once deliberately broke the heir to the throne’s nose during a match at his boarding school, Gordonstoun.
PRINCESS Diana’s former personal chef Darren McGrady affectionately recalls she was the “worst cook ever”, explaining, “I used to work Monday to Friday and had the weekend off. One day she invited a friend over and she was cooking pasta. They got chatting away, the pasta boiled over. The Princess came back into the kitchen, she could smell gas and called the fire brigade.”
McGrady, who cooked for Diana, pictured, during the final years of her life, adds: “Monday morning, I came in and she said, ‘Darren, you wouldn’t believe what happened, I nearly set the kitchen on fire. But the best part was, I had 12 hunky firemen all to myself!’”
REFLECTING on Dame Maggie Smith’s successful London stage comeback in one-woman play A German Life, fellow actress Dame Eileen Atkins, 85, snootily suggests her famous pal wanted to protect her legacy after high-profile screen roles.
“Otherwise she would have gone down in history as Harry Potter and Downton Abbey, and she’d have wanted to kill herself,” Atkins laughs. “We have our standards.”
CELEBRATED actor Sir Anthony Hopkins, 81, long based in California, strangely insists on entertaining fans with a video of his bizarre dance routine outside his Malibu home.
Presumably it’s too much to hope the eccentric old boy might be tempted on to Strictly?
THEY sit in a classroom in Ghana’s capital Accra, young men in tight jeans and baseball caps, focused intently on their studies, keenly aware that doing well could be the key to unlocking a life of wealth and security. Success in these lessons could raise them out of poverty and buy them a ticket to a standard of living they might never have envisaged before signing up for this school.
Some of the subjects on the curriculum will be familiar in many third world educational establishments for ambitious students: English, Information Technology, even Elocution.
But there will be no qualifications at the end of it, just a big, fat bank transfer, because these boys are learning how to “catfish” – to trawl the internet looking for vulnerable wealthy women abroad – and then reel in their catch.
These Ghanaian graduates will use fake identities to pose as well-heeled lonely hearts, gradually persuading their trusting victims that they are the man of their dreams. Before very long, their new “boyfriend” will attempt to con the targets out of every penny they have.
They are so flagrant in poor African countries like Ghana that they even have their own nickname, Sakawa boys, a term which means “putting inside” in the Hausa language.They flaunt their ill-gotten gains for all to see and are easy to spot in their tight jeans and conspicuous gold jewellery, cruising around a particular suburb of the capital in their unlicensed fast cars, loud music blaring.
But the cost to their British victims is hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.
Last year alone, 4,555 romance frauds were reported to Action Fraud, with victims conned out of £50million (a huge rise on the year before, and double the figure in 2015).
But the true scale of the problem is likely to be much higher, as many victims are too embarrassed to come forward.
Kwasi,18, is studying to be a Sakawa boy.
Two years ago, his 21-yearold cousin Manu told him that he, too, could have a brand-new Range Rover
Sport, wear designer watches and rent a fancy apartment.
And he will probably succeed says, private detective Jack Roberts, whose Surrey agency Global Investigations specialises in tracking down internet romance fraudsters.
“The scammers are young, well spoken, computer literate, usually male teenagers who are poached after they leave school and taught how to be scammers,” he says.
“They use unregistered laptops that can easily be disposed of and they’re trained by older, more experienced, scammers.
“They learn about Britain by watching our soaps like Coronation Street and EastEnders, and learn typical British phrases to convince the victim they really are based here, and are only temporarily stuck in Africa or in the
Middle East. The ringleaders insist students nurture victims over many months,” says Jack. “They will be told to send birthday cards, poems, flowers and even money, asking the victim to hold what they claim is their wage whilst their banking issue is being resolved.”
The scammers know what they are doing is wrong but are seduced by the lifestyle.
“Some might draw in about £30,000 pounds a month and they are given a 30 per cent cut of that by their boss,” Jack says.
A typical target will be a woman or man from Europe, America or Asia. The fraudsters pretend to be attractive suitors – choosing good-looking social media users whose identities they then steal – and start by sending a video clip to a target, saying hello. The scammer then claims the microphone or speaker won’t work so can only communicate via online messaging, usually the encrypted WhatsApp, which prevents detection.
“They often say they are in the army and are separated, divorced or widowed,” says Jack. “They build a romantic relationship and the victim gets hooked because there is something so powerful about internet flirtations. I met one man called Kofi Tawney. He was 23 and the ringleader had invested in a course of online elocution lessons for him. “His fake identity was Alexander Baker, of Guildford, Surrey, who was widowed tragically at 56 when his wife died in a car crash, leaving huge debts.
“Kofi had his hooks into a 68-year-old widow, who was keen to help her beloved in any way she could.
“She had already transferred over £50,000 to help him clear his debts and keep his home. But she was being played for a further £50,000.
“The majority of the victims are lonely, middle-aged or older women, but sometimes men, who have lost their life partner
‘The victim gets hooked because there is something so powerful about internet flirtations’