Hi, I'm One of Those Maghas! Nigerian Cyber Scammers and Wonderful Words

"Nigerian Cyber Scammers"
Los Angeles Times (October 20, 2005)

I love language. That's why I was annoyed at losing a rather fine word, a few years ago. I heard it, in a discussion of the Nigerian Scam (you know: you get a message from someone who wants you to help him/her move millions of dollars - all you have to do is send your bank access numbers).

The word meant 'stupid white person,' more or less. And, for quite a while I couldn't find it. That changed today.

A news article from 2005 said that most people, sensibly, ignore those daft come-ons, but that "the few who actually reply make this a tempting and lucrative business for the boys of Festac, a neighborhood of Lagos at the center of the cyber-scam universe. The targets are called maghas — scammer slang from a Yoruba word meaning fool, and refers to gullible white people.

"The e-mail scammers here prefer hitting Americans, whom they see as rich and easy to fool. They rationalize the crime by telling themselves there are no real victims: Maghas are avaricious and complicit."

Aside from satisfying my desire to re-discover "maghas," that article is a good look at one scammer sub-culture. Although it is, admittedly from a maghas point of view.