Shabani Matani

But it surprised me how many of them came from Africa.

My name is Ama.

And all the stories were actually remarkably similar.

In recent years, crime syndicates have focused on scamming Westerners.

So they've heavily recruited workers from English-speaking countries in Africa, like Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone.

On this trip, the majority of the Africans I spoke to were from Uganda.

Sometimes, you know, it was difficult to get deep into conversation.

You know, some of them were also obviously very cautious because they didn't want to expose the inner workings of scam compounds that they believed were still so powerful.

But I did manage to sit down and get to know one man really, really well.

And that was through a friend of mine who introduced me to him.

My friend, his name is Majdara.

He's a Cambodian journalist based in Phnom Penh.

And Dara and I, we spent the week together zooming around in his little tuk-tuk.

He's also a tuk-tuk driver sometimes to earn extra money.

And it was through Dara that I got introduced to one Ugandan man in particular.

His name is Shwaib and he's 24.

We would come to know each other pretty well over the next few weeks.

Shuaib and I ended up meeting in person for the first time at a Cambodian burger chain called Lucky Burgers.

I saw him from the back first.

I could see even from the door when I went in that he was pretty tall, but mostly really lanky.