Gordon couldn’t help smiling. That’s Cas, all right. Always had a different and refreshing perspective, like seeing an object as a cube from one angle and realizing it looked like a pyramid from another.

Before Gordon went to bed, he sent another email to Cas in reply.

Interesting perspective. Let me think about it.

In the morning, Gordon had a reply from Cas, who would be fast asleep by now, DC time.

I gotta proposal for you. Call me early afternoon Ghanian time.

Gordon noticed tangentially that Cas had left out the second of the three a’s in “Ghanaian,” a common mistake. But more to the point, what “proposal” was Cas talking about? Gordon waited until around two that afternoon and then called.

“How you feeling today?” Cas asked.

“A little better, actually.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Cas said. “What’s the temperature over there?”

“Must be in the nineties—it’s the humidity that kills you. I saw on CNN we’re having our first blizzard for the season in DC?”

“Pretty dramatic. I haven’t been out in two days.”

“Well, stay safe. Don’t want you slipping on an icy sidewalk.” Gordon cut to the chase. “What’s this ‘proposal’ you referenced in your email?”

“So, it’s going to sound pretty outlandish at the beginning, but hear me out.”

“Okay.”

“At first my feeling was, fine, so you got duped, now let’s move on. But I’ve been reading tons of articles online about these scam setups and thinking, well, let’s hold our horses a second. Our impression of a bunch of teenagers and young men working out of shitty Internet cafés doesn’t do justice to the whole picture. A few of these individuals do get picked up and thrown into jail, but the rule rather than the exception is that there are very few prosecutions, never mind convictions. And the reason why that’s so is not because the scammers are so slick or that the authorities are powerless to stop them, it’s that the police authorities are in on the game themselves.”

“I imagine that could be true,” Gordon agreed. “Corrupt police isn’t news, really.”

“Sure, but there’s another, maybe even larger factor influencing why so few of these cases are prosecuted,” Cas went on. “Something not immediately obvious is that Americans, Europeans, or whoever has been a victim of one of these scams, rarely turn up in Ghana to take action and try to prosecute. Why? Well, it’s mostly fear of traveling to a country they know nothing about or of getting tangled up in a police system that’s likely to be corrupt and possibly violent.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” Gordon agreed. “I suppose I’d never thought of it that way.”

“Right, right,” Cas said, his crackly voice taking on some eagerness. “So then, the police see nothing’s going to happen and they reach some kind of agreement with the scammers to release them in return for some money. Even if the case goes to court, if the complainant repeatedly doesn’t show up, the court eventually dismisses the case.”