Gordon noticed an answer to the latter comment from someone called Susan Hadley. She wrote, “It could be real! I’ve encountered one of these ‘sakawa’ guys and they really do make that kind of cash. It’s not as easy a life as one might think, though.”

Gordon clicked on Susan Hadley’s name and sent her a private message. “I don’t know your location, but would you be willing to talk to me about sakawa? I’m in Accra but originally from the States. One of these guys duped me. I’m here to find him and I want to know everything about their world.”

Susan replied several hours later. “I’m in Accra as well. I have some experience with sakawa boys. Call me.”

She had left a phone number, and so he did. She told him she was in Ghana for a short vacation. “So, you were scammed by an Internet fraudster?” she asked him, cutting to the chase.

“I was,” Gordon said, “and now I’m learning to own it and face it head on.”

“I’d like to hear about it,” Susan said. “Want to meet for coffee?”

“Sure, absolutely.”

She suggested a time and place: that evening at a coffee and sandwiches place called Ci Gusta! in the Airport Residential area.

Gordon and Susan found an isolated table in Ci Gusta!’s farthest corner. The décor was bright and modern, the atmosphere cheerful. Outside on the patio sat a mixed crowd with a heavy presence of chain-smoking Lebanese.

Gordon ordered a pistachio ice cream while Susan had a raspberry froyo. He sized her up quickly as a burning-out blonde at the point where aging was about to usurp her attractiveness.

Once they were settled, she said, “So, I’m eager to hear your story.”

He told her, and she listened without a word till the very end.

“Quite a tale,” she said. “Unfortunately, not that uncommon.”

“So, what’s the ‘experience with sakawa boys’ you said you’ve had?” Gordon asked.

“Four years ago,” Susan began, “I came to Ghana for a two-year visiting professorship in physics at the University of Ghana. I met a political science student, and we got romantically involved with each other. Nii—that’s his name—was poor as a church mouse then. Fast forward a couple of years, I come back to Ghana in February this year and Nii has transformed himself. He has expensive clothes and he’s driving a fancy car and living in a near mansion. Unbelievable. I knew there was no way this could be legit money. When I first asked him about it, he was evasive, but after I badgered him almost to distraction, he admitted he was a fraud boy, or sakawa boy—whatever term you prefer.”

“What was his con game of preference?”