INTRODUCING: Chameleon

Summary

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Dark Downeast: INTRODUCING Chameleon

Podcast: Dark Downeast
Host: Kylie Low
Original Air Date: February 13, 2026
Featured Podcast: Chameleon (Campside Media & Audiochuck) – Hosted by Josh Dean, with journalists Katrina Onstad and Hannah Ajala

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Episode Overview

This episode of Dark Downeast is an introduction and preview for Chameleon, a podcast that explores the hidden world of online deception—specifically, a sprawling, global catfishing operation centered on a stolen identity, the cam girl Janessa Brazil. The story explores how her image was used to scam thousands, pulling listeners into a wider look at the psychology, industry, and culture that make catfishing so powerful.

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Key Points and Insights

1. Kylie Low’s Fascination with Catfishing ([00:00])

• Kylie shares her "Obsession Level" interest with catfishing stories and introduces Chameleon as a show that captures the psychological depth and intrigue she seeks.
  • “The layers, the psychology, the way people can perform an entire life online and get away with it.” (Kylie Low, 00:06)
• The featured episode from Chameleon will play in full, focusing on the Janessa Brazil catfishing scam.

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2. The Story of Simon and "Shrilly" ([01:54]–[06:03])

• Journalist Simon de Brusell receives a message from "Shrilly"—beginning a slow-burn online relationship.
  • “He ended up talking to this person who presented herself as an American in Flint, Michigan. A mother, a hard worker, an environmentalist.” (Joe Barrett, [02:49])
• Red flags emerge when she requests money, claiming to be stranded in Toronto.
  • “She was trapped there in a snowstorm. They had taken her passport and she needed help to get back.” (Joe Barrett, [03:29])
• Simon investigates and discovers similar stories and images under the name Janessa Brazil. The scam is multi-layered and emotionally manipulative.
  • “He finds other people online talking about being scammed by a woman using some of the same images Shirley had sent him.” (Josh Dean, [03:56])
• The final reveal: money sent through PayPal is flagged due to being redirected to West Africa, triggering a realization for Simon and sending him on a mission to expose the truth.
  • “He kind of snapped to and realized, ‘Oh God, I’m still being scammed. It’s just that the scam is always taking a new shape.’” (Joe Barrett, [05:39])

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3. Who Is Janessa Brazil? The Roots of the Image ([06:03]–[15:55])

• Janessa Brazil, real name Vanessa, was an early, successful cam girl who shared a wide array of content online—photos both sexual and ‘everyday’.
  • “Before there was OnlyFans, she had a subscription-only service and she was making, she says at one point, about a million dollars a year.” (Joe Barrett, [08:32])
• This abundance of realistic footage made her the perfect bait for scammers.
• Vanessa’s own life: Brazilian immigrant, raised in hardship, worked in exotic entertainment and clothing, delayed by her undocumented status, eventually became a cam girl following a life-altering car accident.
  • “With the money from that car accident, she got a boob job and started performing online... her husband was sort of her agent.” (Joe Barrett, [13:47])
• She gradually realized scammers were using her likeness en masse.
  • “This guy comes into my chat and he says that we're married… and that's when I started to realize what was happening.” (Vanessa (Janessa Brazil), [14:35])
• The fallout: repeated angry or heartbroken messages from victims; she eventually withdrew from online life due to harassment and guilt.
  • “I think having to absorb the vitriol of that many people who felt that she had ruined their lives… it's hard to imagine what that would feel like.” (Joe Barrett, [16:22])

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4. The Catfishing Industry: The West African Connection ([16:42]–[24:25])

• Many scams traced to West Africa—specifically Nigeria and Ghana—where organized groups known as the Sakawa Boys operate.
  • “The Love Janessa team was able to trace many of the scammers using Vanessa's images to a single region... West Africa, Nigeria, and Ghana in particular, is the global hub for romance scams.” (Josh Dean, [16:42])
• Hannah Ajala, a British Nigerian journalist, joins to penetrate this world. She explores the cultural and socioeconomic context that breeds these schemes.
  • “It's coming from desperation. Because you're in a country and a system where youth unemployment is skyrocketing and you want to find means to make a living.” (Hannah Ajala, [20:52])
• The culture of the Sakawa Boys includes ritual beliefs—using witchcraft and spiritual practices to succeed in scams.
  • “Someone that's heavily involved in fraudulent activities also may be heavily involved in witchcraft, in voodoo, and other dark spiritual activities.” (Hannah Ajala, [19:52])
• Scammers conduct "work" out of internet cafés, targeting Westerners, often using handbooks and scripts. Many refer to victims as “clients.”
  • “You could find yourself in a network that comes with a Saqawa handbook, a literal guide on how to be the best of the best romance scammer.” (Hannah Ajala, [23:10])

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5. The Art of Online Manipulation ([23:23]–[26:38])

• Techniques used by both cam girls and scammers are shockingly similar—psychological manipulation, breadcrumbing, mirroring desires.
  • “The incredible skill that Vanessa... had in her sex work is this sort of psychological manipulation... giving them just exactly what they want and mirroring back to them their deepest needs and desires.” (Joe Barrett, [23:56])
  • “I read endless books on psychology, hypnotism, and how to manipulate their minds, but not in a bad way…. Win their hearts, you win their wallets, and the rest is history.” (Vanessa (Janessa Brazil), [24:25])
• New technology enables scammers: AI can now create convincing video, mimic voices, and hide identities.
  • “A scammer today can probably map Janessa's image onto his own face and become her in a video. You really can't even trust your eyes anymore.” (Josh Dean, [27:18])

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6. Victims: The Human Cost ([27:50]–[34:18])

• The scam usually unfolds slowly—building a relationship, love bombing, then gradually escalating requests for money.
  • “The young man in Ghana described it as a courtship like any other... it's a long game.” (Joe Barrett, [27:50])
• Victims are not uniformly lonely or naïve—case of Roberto, a young, successful Italian farmer, losing nearly a quarter million euros over five years.
  • “He fell in love, like really and truly in love... had built a virtual relationship for just over five years.” (Joe Barrett, [31:11])
• The psychological effects linger: shame, heartbreak, ruined lives.
  • “It was a gradual deterioration of their lives.” (Hannah Ajala, [38:05])
• Vanessa (Janessa) herself became a victim—unable to turn to the police, carrying the blame and consequences for her image's misuse.
  • “She assumed [the police] would just say, you're a porn star. You brought this on yourself.” (Joe Barrett, [34:18])

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7. Perspectives from the Scammers ([34:54]–[37:31])

• Some scammers feel guilt, others rationalize it as “reparations” against former colonizers.
  • “He said that he did feel bad, but the game is the game. Gotta keep it going. Like, you could see that he had some remorse.” (Hannah Ajala, [35:06])
  • “There's no remorse because we're taking back what was taken from us.…to encourage people… don’t fall back. Their ancestors stole from us, so it's time for us to get back what's ours.” (Hannah Ajala, [35:19])

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8. Broader Implications and Final Thoughts ([37:31]–[39:43])

• Scamming thrives in regions with unstable governance and deep poverty. For many, it's a means of survival.
  • “No one is born bad... but that is the result for many people when they just can't see a way out in a system that's repetitively failing them.” (Hannah Ajala, [36:42])
• Raising awareness is critical: anyone can be a target, especially in an age of AI-deepened deception.
  • “It's raising awareness about the dangers of romance, scamming the lives that it ruins, and the importance of how careful we have to be when pursuing anything, romantic or not, online.” (Hannah Ajala, [37:35])
• Ultimately, it's a story about vulnerability and empathy—the universal desire for love, and how that can be both a person’s strength and undoing.
  • “Our ability to love is our greatest strength as a species, but it's our greatest vulnerability, too.” (Josh Dean, [38:42])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “PayPal says, no, you can't transfer this money because this money is going to West Africa. And then the scales… fell from his eyes.” (Joe Barrett, [05:39])
• “She became like a white whale. People are all over the Internet asking, who is this? Who is Janessa Brazil? Did she get in your pocket? Did she get into your head, your heart?” (Joe Barrett, [07:26])
• “She could charge, like a hundred bucks for five minutes. That kind of cam girl celebrity.” (Joe Barrett, [09:42])
• “You could tell he's a family man... he did feel bad, but the game is the game.” (Hannah Ajala, [35:06])
• “There’s no remorse because we’re taking back what was taken from us.” (Hannah Ajala, [35:19])
• “Love can make you imagine things. But then, oddly, it's quite warming and surprising to know how many human beings are willing to wear their heart on their sleeve like that.” (Hannah Ajala, [38:28])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Time | Segment/Topic | |--------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00 | Kylie Low introduces her passion for catfishing stories and pitches Chameleon | | 01:54 | The beginning of Simon and “Shrilly”’s online relationship | | 03:56 | Simon’s first doubts and investigation into Shirley’s real identity | | 06:03 | Introduction to Janessa Brazil—whose images were hijacked | | 14:35 | Vanessa realizes her identity is being used in romance scams | | 16:07 | Vanessa deals with victims’ anger and heartbreak | | 16:42 | Scams traced to West Africa; Sakawa Boys introduced | | 20:52 | The socio-economic roots of scamming in Ghana and Nigeria | | 23:10 | Training and handbooks for romance scammers | | 24:25 | Vanessa on her own psychological techniques as a cam girl | | 27:18 | The impact of new tech (AI, voice changers) on catfishing | | 30:22 | The story of Roberto, high-value catfishing victim | | 33:39 | Why Janessa Brazil’s image became so ubiquitous | | 35:06 | Interviews with scammers: guilt and rationalization | | 36:42 | Structural and economic drivers that fuel the rise of romance scams | | 37:35 | The importance of raising awareness; anyone can be a victim | | 38:42 | Final reflections on love, vulnerability, and human connection |

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Overall Tone & Takeaway

Chameleon offers a deeply human, empathetic exploration of how catfishing preys on universal desires for connection—both a psychological thriller and social commentary. The episode is careful not to demonize victims, and it acknowledges both the skill and desperation among perpetrators. It raises tough questions about privacy, trust, and the future dangers unleashed by increasingly sophisticated technology.

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Transcript

[Kylie Lowe]

Hey, everyone, it's Kylie Lowe here. If you've listened to Dark down east for a while, you know, I'm drawn to stories where nothing is quite what it seems. And I've got a real special interest, like Obsession Level with stories of catfishing. The layers, the psychology, the way people can perform an entire life online and get away with it. So that's exactly why I want to tell you about Chameleon, a weekly podcast from Audiocheck and Campside Media. Chameleon dives deep into stories of people who hide in plain sight. They manipulate, they deceive, and they build identities so convincing that by the time the truth comes out, the damage is already done. In the latest episode, host and journalist Josh Dean unpacks the jaw dropping case of cam girl Janessa Brazil. Her image was stolen and used to catfish and scam hundreds, possibly thousands of people out of millions of dollars. Victims were convinced they were in real relationships, sending money, sharing secrets, and falling in love, all with someone who didn't know they existed. It's a story about lies, intimacy, and a massive underground industry built on deception. I could not stop listening. Like, I even took the podcast into the shower with me because I was so into it. I knew I had to share this story with you too. So my friends at Chameleon are sharing this case with us so that you can hear the full episode right here, right now. And after you're done listening, you can find more stories like this on Chameleon, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Joe Barrett]

Campsite Media.

[Hannah Ajala]

Hello. What is.

[Joe Barrett]

What do you want me to say?

[Josh Dean]

Chameleon, Chameleon, Chameleon Weekly.

[Hannah Ajala]

Oh.

[Joe Barrett]

So there was this journalist in England who got what so many of us get, which is like the ping on the Twitter or in your inbox or in your messages saying, hey, I really like the photos that you posted.

[Josh Dean]

This is Katrina Onstadt, a podcast producer and journalist in Canada, talking about Simon DeBrussell, who for the past 20 years has been a correspondent for the Times of London. Simon received this message on New Year's Eve 2018. The sender went on to introduce herself.

[Joe Barrett]

My name is Shrilly. Not Shirley, but Shrilly. S H R I L E Y and this journalist, Simon, was quite intrigued and began a kind of conversation with this person on the other end of these texts.

[Josh Dean]

Gradually, message by message, a relationship began to form.

[Joe Barrett]

He's a bit older, so I think he didn't really understand that this is a common experience of life online. He ended up talking to this person who presented herself as an American in Flint, Michigan. A mother, a hard worker, an environmentalist. And he was quite intrigued by her.

[Josh Dean]

Shirley shared photos, too. She was, I'm sure most people would agree, incredibly beautiful. The two were trading messages most days, often many times a day, and grew quite close. Pretty soon, Simon found himself falling for this woman he'd never met.

[Joe Barrett]

And then all of a sudden, she started asking for money. The bells didn't go off quite as quickly as I think they might to someone who's a little more online. But he eventually sort of got the sense that maybe this wasn't all kosher. She ended up pinging him from what she said was a hotel in Toronto. She was trapped there in a snowstorm. They had taken her passport and she needed help to get back.

[Josh Dean]

Creeping doubts aside, Simon was enraptured. He wanted to ignore these doubts, but his journalistic radar was beginning to twitch. And he starts to do a little investigating. He finds other people online talking about being scammed by a woman using some of the same images Shirley had sent him.

[Joe Barrett]

He's sort of investigating this now as a journalist, wondering if he's being scammed.

[Josh Dean]

He presses Shirley for answers. Why am I seeing your pictures used in these online romance scams? And who is Janessa Brazil, the name that seems to often be associated with these images? Shirley reassures him she's got a good explanation.

[Joe Barrett]

When he confronts her, she says, actually, yeah, lots of people are using my image online in scams. And thank you for discovering this. Thank you. Because I am the real Janessa Brazile and my life has been made a living hell. My funds have been frozen, I'm the subject of lawsuits, and. And I really need your help, actually.

[Josh Dean]

Now that the whole truth is out, she says she and Simon can really get close.

[Joe Barrett]

And then she sort of double scams him. Right? So it's always like scam on top of scam in this story. It was such a labyrinth to navigate.

[Josh Dean]

Simon isn't totally at ease. He's skeptical. That's the journalist in him. But a big part of him, his emotional core, still believes that this could be real. He wants this to be real. So he agrees to help Shirley out again. He sends her some money via PayPal, the least he can do to help his online girlfriend escape Toronto. But there's one problem.

[Joe Barrett]

PayPal says, no, you can't transfer this money because this money is going to West Africa. And then the scales, you know, fell from his eyes, that he kind of snapped to and realized, oh, God, of still being scammed. It's just that the scam is always taking a new shape.

[Josh Dean]

This is Chameleon, a weekly look at the many faces used by scammers and con artists. I'm Josh Dean. This week we ask, who is the woman whose image became the face of catfishing scams around the world? And who's really behind this con? This is chameleon weekly. The PayPal news broke the spell. Simon de Brasil was now sure he was being scammed. He'd been catfished, Lured into an intimate online only relationship with someone pretending to be a sexy American single mom named Shirley, who'd set out to gain his trust with the aim of extracting money from him to help himself get over the shock, sadness and embarrassment, Simon decided to go on the offensive and investigate his own scam. And what he found is that the photos Shirley had shared of a stunning brunette had been used in numerous other romance scams around the world. And this scammer, whoever it was, most often went by the name Janessa Brazil. He found the name mentioned over and over on the message boards where scam victims gather and trade stories.

[Joe Barrett]

She became like a white whale. People are all over the Internet asking, who is this? Who is Janessa Brazile? Did she get in your pocket? Did she get into your head, your heart? And we wanted to find out why this one image and this name was everywhere. Like, who is the actual face? Who are the humans at the center of these alarms? Elaborate, elaborate schemes.

[Josh Dean]

This was the jumping off point for a quest that ultimately became a podcast called Love Janessa, produced by Katrina Onstad and hosted by the British Nigerian journalist Hannah Ajala. An investigation that led Katrina and Hannah and their team to a very real human behind the mysterious name.

[Joe Barrett]

So Janessa Brazile was what you would call like, an early adopter of the online sex culture. She was a cam girl with a large audience.

[Josh Dean]

Cam girls were an early Internet phenomenon. Women who would perform on camera, not necessarily doing amateur porn, just living their lives, but also sometimes taking off their clothes.

[Joe Barrett]

Before there was OnlyFans, she had a subscription only service and she was making, she says at one point, about a million dollars a year. She really understood that space and posted a lot of images before everybody shared everything on social media. She was sharing not just sexually explicit pictures and not just performing shows, but also pictures of herself grocery shopping and doing her laundry.

[Josh Dean]

It was actually those pictures that made this former cam girl the perfect cover.

[Joe Barrett]

For catfishers because there was so much out there. So when the scammers needed to be roping in their victims and showing them evidence that Janessa Brazile was a real person. They could say, this isn't just a sexual thing. Like, here is me going to the flower market today. Here's me going out to dinner with my friends. And so unbeknownst to her, she sort of unleashed her image in this way that we all do very casually now. But she was early. Like, this was kind of the, you know, the early 2010s in those days.

[Josh Dean]

Janessa had a huge online presence.

[Joe Barrett]

She had a very big following. She was an adult entertainer. She wasn't a porn star. She wasn't having sex with people, but she was performing. And she could charge, like a hundred bucks for five minutes. That kind of cam girl celebrity.

[Josh Dean]

But despite this, the real Janessa Brazil was surprisingly hard for the podcast team to track down. In Janessa's line of work, you can imagine that having obsessive fans knowing where to find you would be a problem. They ultimately found Vanessa through an old friend of hers, a radio DJ named. And for those who haven't had the privilege, I swear this is real. Bubba the Love Sponge. This might hurt a bit. Ready? I'm already doing it.

[Joe Barrett]

Welcome to the Bubba the Love Sponge show.

[Josh Dean]

Bubba, real name Todd Allen Clem, is an American shock jock radio star who learned his brash, hypersexualized broadcasting style from the school of Howard Stern, who was also somewhat familiar with Janessa. I was on Janessa's website. Janessa Brazil. Yeah, that's her made up.

[Hannah Ajala]

That's a very impressive name.

[Josh Dean]

There she is. There's her. Nice ass. Janessa was a kind of regular on the Bubba the Love Sponge show, and the fact that her image was being used in catfishing schemes came up a few times. Turns out it wasn't a recent phenomenon.

[Todd Allen Clem (Bubba the Love Sponge)]

And in fact, I'm in a full blown direct message conversation with a person that's trying to tell me their genetic Janessa.

[Joe Barrett]

Okay.

[Todd Allen Clem (Bubba the Love Sponge)]

You know that I showed it to you?

[Hannah Ajala]

Absolutely.

[Todd Allen Clem (Bubba the Love Sponge)]

And they live in Sweden and they want their money.

[Vanessa (Janessa Brazil)]

It's no news to me. It's been happening for years, and now.

[Todd Allen Clem (Bubba the Love Sponge)]

They'Re calling me Clem, like, you know, you don't like when I call you Clem now. The Clam. Send me that 800 bucks.

[Vanessa (Janessa Brazil)]

I don't think I've ever called you that.

[Josh Dean]

Bubba and Janessa became close, and she even lived with him for a while as a platonic roommate. Katrina knew that she had to get to Bubba to get to Janessa.

[Joe Barrett]

So trying to get him was amazing because if you call his number, you get like a racetrack, like a Bubba the Sponge. Racetrack or something.

[Ashley Flowers]

Please check bubbaracewaypark.com for times and pricing.

[Joe Barrett]

Thanks so much, and we hope to see you here at the racetrack. We were always leaving messages at this racetrack and just trying to.

[Josh Dean]

Anyway, finally, Bubba called back. He was protective of Janessa at first.

[Joe Barrett]

It was a really fascinating conversation with him. Like, he was in his studio, which had a shower booth, like, behind him in case, like, porn stars wanted to come by. And he facilitated an introduction. And I think she didn't really want to be found, you know, like, she wanted a modicum of privacy. And we were lucky enough that he trusted us enough to. To put us in touch.

[Josh Dean]

Her name, as you've surely guessed, isn't actually Janessa Brazile.

[Joe Barrett]

Her name is Vanessa. I'm not going to say her last name because obviously she's trying to live a private life. We found her in a small town in the States. I'm not going to say where. And she told us her story, and it was. It's a real gut punch of a story. Like, she came to the United States with her mom as a child from Brazil. They didn't have a lot of money. They came here. Her mom had been a dentist at home, but when she came here, she started stripping. Then she eventually started making clothes for strippers.

[Josh Dean]

Vanessa learned this skill from her mom, started to help, and ultimately saved enough money from making clothes for dancers to put herself through private school, where she did very well. College was obviously next, and when she.

[Joe Barrett]

Went to apply, she discovered she was actually undocumented. It's so interesting. It's just like, you see all the paths that a life can take, and when one door slams, her life just veered in a completely different direction. So suddenly, her opportunities narrowed.

[Josh Dean]

Vanessa didn't go to college. She fell in love and got married. And then her career as a cam girl got started, prompted by a very unlikely event. A serious car accident, a that led to a settlement.

[Joe Barrett]

With the money from that car accident, she got a boob job and started performing online, like, just posting pictures and then gradually doing kind of camming after work. And her husband was sort of. Her agent helped her with this. They both profited from it, and she looked at it as a kind of innocuous side hustle, a pretty easy and.

[Josh Dean]

Increasingly lucrative side hustle with one particular and highly unexpected byproduct.

[Joe Barrett]

Things were going pretty well, but every once in a while, she would get these little messages saying, hey, you know, you're my wife. I thought you were gonna stop doing this. Aren't we in love? We Already talked about this.

[Josh Dean]

Here she is talking about it on the podcast Katrina produced.

[Vanessa (Janessa Brazil)]

This guy comes into my chat and he says that we're married. And I was like, I'm sorry, what? And they're like, you're my wife, and you told me you were gonna quit this.

[Kylie Lowe]

And I went, is this guy joking with me?

[Vanessa (Janessa Brazil)]

Is this like a prank? And I was like, why don't you send me an email and tell me what's going on? And that's when I started to realize what was happening.

[Joe Barrett]

Gradually, it became clear to her that she had provided this deep well of images and experiences for scammers to draw upon, and that they were kind of pulling from her own imagery and creating these composite Janessa Brazils and using them as the bait in these elaborate catfishing schemes. And she was bearing the brunt of this because people would call and be super pissed off, right? They lost lots and lots of money. And actually, part of it that I think when we talked to her, that she found even more troubling was how heartbroken they were. Like, they really, truly believed that she was in love with them and had not delivered on that love. Like, these were really, really gutted men.

[Josh Dean]

It's impossible to know how widely Janessa's image was disseminated and used in catfishing scams. Katrina guesses that number is in the thousands, as in thousands of men who were targeted for a variety of sums.

[Joe Barrett]

Like, she would get calls saying, I lost $70,000, $50,000, $5,000. It was a lot of money.

[Josh Dean]

This really reached a Peak in 2016. When Vanessa decided she'd had enough. She went dark and tried to fade back into America.

[Joe Barrett]

I think having to absorb the vitriol of that many people who felt that she had ruined their lives. I mean, it's hard to imagine what that would feel like. You haven't done anything, but you have to bear the brunt of it.

[Josh Dean]

After the break, the hunt for the people behind those images and how they weaponized one woman's photos as part of an entire catfishing industry. Welcome back to Chameleon. The Love Janessa team was able to trace many of the scammers using Vanessa's images to a single region where Simon was told his PayPal money was about to be sent. West Africa, Nigeria, and Ghana in particular, is the global hub for romance scams, which is why the Love Janessa team needed someone who knew the region and its culture to help them investigate. That's what led British Nigerian journalist Hannah Ajala to join the team.

[Hannah Ajala]

I'm A journalist, reporter. But yeah, if I haven't mentioned the word traveler, that is definitely one thing that I absolutely love to do is open up my eyes in terms of, you know, the places, the communities, and the people that I've crossed paths with.

[Josh Dean]

The Love Genasa producers had seen Hannah's work and reached out. It didn't take much convincing.

[Hannah Ajala]

It definitely took the whole idea of catfishing to another level. And the fact that it became part of what I tend to describe as a global catfishing phenomenon was something that enticed me to want to discover more of the story, especially knowing that this woman's face also held prominence in West Africa, in Lagos, Nigeria specifically, as well, where I was when I first heard about Janessa, Brazil.

[Josh Dean]

You probably already associate West Africa with scamming to some extent. The Nigerian prince asking for a bank account to store huge amounts of money is the classic known as a 419 scam, after the part of the Nigerian criminal code that deems this illegal. That trick goes all the way back to the 1980s and was definitely one of the earliest scams to take advantage of the nascent Internet, specifically using email. It's come a long way since then.

[Joe Barrett]

We really wanted someone with familiarity with that zone of the world. So she went there to try and meet a kind of criminal subculture called the Sakawa Boys.

[Hannah Ajala]

So Sacawa is the Hausa language spoken in many parts of the African continent, and it literally means to be put inside. But it's been associated with a colloquial tan for a romance scammer.

[Josh Dean]

The Sacawa Boys are a sprawling underground community of mostly young men involved in various scamming activities.

[Hannah Ajala]

There are some women that are part of this, but it's a massive network of young boys, a lot of them based in Ghana, who work together to essentially create these multiple identities. And they specifically target victims in Westernized countries.

[Josh Dean]

Inside the Sacawa world, there's a belief that supernatural forces can help them succeed, that rituals could draw in victims and protect the scammer from consequences.

[Hannah Ajala]

Someone that's heavily involved in fraudulent activities also may be heavily involved in witchcraft, in voodoo, and other dark spiritual activities.

[Josh Dean]

And a lot of it turns out to be based in Ghana, not Nigeria.

[Hannah Ajala]

There's loads of crazy PR about Nigeria. You open up the headlines and you see all of that. So the assumption is that a majority of these networks must live and breathe there. But a very massive part of this podcast was spending time in Ghana. I am Nigerian by heritage, but I've spent a lot of time in Ghana. Just next door. And I never would have imagined that a network like Saqawa existed in Ghana.

[Josh Dean]

If you know what you're looking for, it's easy to see the Sacawa boys flaunt their wealth and power on the streets of Accra and other Ghanaian cities. But there's something else driving it. Because no one embarks on a career dreaming of becoming a scammer.

[Hannah Ajala]

It's coming from desperation. Because you're in a country and a system where youth unemployment is skyrocketing and you want to find means to make a living.

[Josh Dean]

It's actually a pretty good way of making a living. Romance scamming isn't a crime in Ghana, but it's still looked down on. And this is not a career that people like to shout about from the rooftops.

[Hannah Ajala]

It's not like a typical job that you see promoted in yellow pages. It's always through word of mouth.

[Josh Dean]

Turns out scamming flies pretty easily under the radar.

[Hannah Ajala]

Some of these scammers are family men. Their family members think they work in construction. They've been doing this for nearly a decade and there's never been a raised eyebrow. They're putting food on the table, money's coming in all the time. There's never a concern, there's never an odd behavior.

[Josh Dean]

A lot of the scamming happens from Internet cafes, partly because it's rare for a young Ghanaian to have a whole computer set up at home. But also it's just good cover.

[Hannah Ajala]

What job doesn't involve having a computer? Very little. So that's how you're able to kind of mask that.

[Josh Dean]

Hannah's reporting took her to some Internet cafes and it didn't take long for her to find some people who were involved. One rainy afternoon, she and her producer just walked into one cafe in Accra.

[Hannah Ajala]

We literally saw within five minutes of being there, two boys probably aged between 16 to 19 on a dating website. Their profile was of a white European brunette woman. And you could see the men that they're speaking to. Older, middle aged men from one of these target countries.

[Josh Dean]

Just two young boys in the middle of their workday. Because this really is a job. That's how they treat it.

[Joe Barrett]

You think you're in this kind of high stakes, glamorous or like at least sort of, I don't know, shady underworld. But also it's just like a lot of administrative tasks and spreadsheets.

[Hannah Ajala]

Some actually describe the victims of romance fraud as clients because it puts them in that mindset of this is my job, this is my client.

[Josh Dean]

It's a Job with training, knowledge passed through this informal group of highly trained.

[Hannah Ajala]

Catfishers, you could find yourself in a network that comes with a saqawa handbook, a literal guide on how to be the best of the best romance scammer.

[Josh Dean]

There's a pretty widely held perception that victims of romance scams are rubes, lonely losers. But this isn't fair. People of all kinds fall for these scams for many reasons. And one of those reasons is that the people behind the images know exactly what people are looking for. How to turn the screw. It's an approach that Vanessa herself, the real woman behind the Janessa photos, understands well. In fact, it was her whole business plan when she too was openly wooing men to send her money online.

[Joe Barrett]

The incredible skill that Vanessa, the real person, the cam girl, had in her sex work is this sort of psychological manipulation. And she's really good at brain breadcrumbing. The men who are sitting across from her on screen and giving them just exactly what they want and mirroring back to them their deepest needs and desires, even anticipating what they want and reading them.

[Josh Dean]

Here's how she explained it to the Love Janessa team.

[Vanessa (Janessa Brazil)]

They get hooked and they get like, oh, shoots. I really like that. I didn't even know I liked that. I do. I know you like something before you actually like it. Because I read and research, I read endless books on psychology, hypnotism, and how to manipulate their minds, but not in a bad way. That's what they're there for. So let's play. You win their hearts, you win their wallets, and the rest is history.

[Joe Barrett]

All of these techniques, all of these tools are the same ones that the scammers use, right? That's exactly what this person on the other end of the line with Simon was doing, was saying, oh, thank you so much. You found me. I am broken. I do need you to patch me up. Can you just wire this money to this hotel in Toronto where I'm holed up right now?

[Josh Dean]

The people on the other end of those catfishing schemes, the ones holding the rods, they understand this intuitively. They are, or have become master manipulators.

[Joe Barrett]

They're really good, these guys. They will meet the need, you know, they will meet the void. They'll slip in there and take the shape required to get what they want.

[Josh Dean]

Victims will quite naturally often push for face to face communications. But the scammers have a strategy for this.

[Joe Barrett]

Can we just hop on a call? Can we just talk? Oh, my phone is broken. Oh, my carrier cut me off. Oh, this happened. That happened or the victim might set up a zoom with the person and then they just won't show. And then the scammer will say, well, no, I was there. You weren't there. Like, it just goes on and on.

[Hannah Ajala]

There are some clients that aren't too fussed about seeing them because to them, pictures are enough. Some of these people may not also be technologically savvy. So texting and speaking on the phone occasionally is fine for them as well. Because you've also got to bear in mind a lot of the people that they target are much older. So because of that, that means that they're not using technology in a way that young people would.

[Josh Dean]

But no one is actually safe because the Sacawa boys are definitely keeping up with the latest technology.

[Joe Barrett]

One of the couple of boys we interviewed said that they have recording devices that can turn a male voice into a female voice. So they will have these long, very intimate, often sexual conversations. And I love this as a podcaster, that so many of these guys talked about these long conversations, these audio experiences, because audio, as we all know, is the most intimate medium of all, right? The voice is literally in your body. You're in the dark with your headphones, and this other person is right inside of you.

[Josh Dean]

It was more than three years ago when Katrina and Hannah reported this story. In that relatively short time, artificial intelligence has completely transformed online truth. A scammer today can probably map Janessa's image onto his own face and become her in a video. You really can't even trust your eyes anymore. Combine that with the ever evolving skill of the catfishers, and, well, this isn't an industry that's going to be stomped out anytime soon. These scams all follow a pattern. It's a long game.

[Joe Barrett]

The young man in Ghana described it as a courtship like any other. That essentially the first months are building up trust that there's a little bit.

[Hannah Ajala]

Of love bombing, birthdays, anniversaries, sending them things, knowing that it's not on the first conversation that you get your payout. You have to build a relationship. If they're questioning why they haven't seen you on video call in the months that you've been speaking, there is a response for everything. It may mean speaking to them throughout the day, every day. Some may take turns. Probably send them a little profile of, okay, this is the client. This is everything you need to know about them. This is things that they like. This is how they like to be spoken to. Remember this about their mum. They have a test coming up, so it can absolutely be A combination of one to one work or group work, meaning that you're splitting the earnings, the multitasking skills are out of this world. Some of them could be speaking to up to a dozen people in the space of a month. 12 people, 12 different conversations, 12 bits of information to remember. Names, family members, the job that they do. And whilst I'm warming up that person, slash client, I'm working on the next person.

[Joe Barrett]

People's alarm bells aren't going off right away. And then once that groundwork is firmly established, then they'll say, oh, you know, my. Actually my just lost my phone. There's some elaborate reason that they can't access their funds. And a lot of times if it's women being scammed, the men will be traveling or they'll be in the military and they'll say that they are doing top secret work. And because of that work, they're not able to access their bank accounts. So it's a kind of slow drip, right?

[Josh Dean]

A hundred here, 200 there. Nothing that might set off alarms.

[Joe Barrett]

The really big scams will come much farther down the road, but usually it is about care in some way. Like it will be some kind of personal crisis. The way you would lean on anyone that you loved if you were in a moment of financial crisis. And you said, this is terrible and I don't want to do this, but I really need this $10,000.

[Josh Dean]

Because XYZ, the real gut punch in the Love Janessa podcast is an Italian farmer who was taken for nearly a quarter million dollars by a scammer using Janessa photos.

[Hannah Ajala]

That was one person. I mean, yeah, €250,000. Roberto. He's a young Italian slave stallion, as I nicknamed him, around my age. I'm in my early 30s. So is he. He's not an old person with, you know, dozens of cats at home and widowed. He was, I guess, quite busy running the several farms that he did in beautiful Sardinia.

[Joe Barrett]

I think his point of weakness, his vulnerability, was his romantic nature. Like he was just a giant open heart walking around this planet, like just ready to be squashed.

[Hannah Ajala]

And they had built a virtual relationship for just over five years.

[Joe Barrett]

He fell in love, like really and truly in love. And at one point he sent her a plane ticket to come to see him in Italy and went to the airport and saw a dark haired woman getting off the plane and tried to follow her and thought it was her and thought she got in a cab and left and was convinced that she had been there. Like he had told himself this story that she had Come but rejected him. It was this really incredible kind of mind trick.

[Josh Dean]

The romantic mind is powerful. It creates massive blind spots.

[Hannah Ajala]

This is the love of my life. Why would I not give them a few hundred? Why would I not give them a few thousand? Why would I not give them tens of thousands? So it's a love trap filled with love bombing, filled with a really intelligent system that's operating on a 24 hour kind of schedule that turns into a relationship where the payout for the perpetrator is sweet because it's money.

[Josh Dean]

Anyone who's been in a bad relationship or who fell in love with someone who never truly paid that love back understands this on some level.

[Joe Barrett]

But what's incredible, I think, is that people will see these gaps and victims will notice that things aren't lining up or that their lover has wrong information about them or is conveying something that's not true. And they'll give them a free pass. Right. Like, we talked to a psychologist about this and like, why does it take so long for the red flags? And she said, well, it's like sunk costs. The stories that we tell ourselves are so they can just eclipse all logic. And we become very irrational in the face of love. The scammers know that and they exploit those holes. When we finally met Vanessa and asked her, we had many, many questions to ask her. And one of which was like, did you actually go to Sardinia? And she said, I've never been outside of the United States and Brazil are the only two places I've ever traveled. And even to the point where when we finally got them together, which is the final episode of the show, even then, it was almost like he couldn't fathom that she truly hadn't been the human at the center of this chaos in his life. I think he really thought that he had been scammed by Janessa. Brazil.

[Josh Dean]

Obviously the Sacawa boys aren't just using Janessa's photos, but a lot of them were, still are, probably will be for years and years.

[Joe Barrett]

We asked her that, like, why do you think you're the one that's so iterated? And she said, I can be anything. She's Brazilian, but she says people think she's Italian, people think she's Greek. She's this kind of global look for global scams. It's just the image took on a life of its own.

[Josh Dean]

It's a life that had serious implications for the real Vanessa. She became a victim, like Simon, Roberto and thousands of others.

[Joe Barrett]

And Vanessa herself, she said she never even thought to go to the Police because what she told us was that she assumed they would just say, you're a porn star. You brought this on yourself.

[Hannah Ajala]

Anyone can be a target. I think the more that you share, the more that you naturally have that risk for someone to duplicate images of you and pretend to be you. And I've seen it even on a smaller scale of friends that I have on Instagram, could have a few odd hundreds, maybe a thousand followers. And someone has gone on their profile.

[Josh Dean]

Hannah met several of the Sacawa boys who used Vanessa's photos, impressed them on their motivations and feelings. One boy definitely feels bad about what he did, although it's not clear cut either.

[Hannah Ajala]

You could tell he's a family man. He's got a wife and kids. He said that he did feel bad, but the game is the game. Gotta keep it going. Like, you could see that he had some remorse.

[Josh Dean]

Others saw their culpability very differently.

[Hannah Ajala]

Young man, quite outgoing, but very low key. No remorse. He sees it as reparations. He makes the link of Ghana being the first African nation to break free from colonial rule and the fact that they were colonized from many of these countries that these romance scammers often target. There's no remorse because we're taking back what was taken from us. So I don't know if it's something that they do to make their conscience feel better about these crimes essentially that they've committed that have literally ruined lives. But I can imagine that that's probably something that's also widely spoken about in the networks to encourage people to say, look, don't fall back. Their ancestors stole from us, so it's time for us to get back what's ours.

[Josh Dean]

There's no concerted effort to crack down on the gangs. The laws, when there are any, aren't enforced.

[Hannah Ajala]

The industry of romance, Cameron, and fraud is continuing to thrive can be very hard in overpopulated countries where there are already so many other economical issues at.

[Josh Dean]

Hand, not to mention unstable, unpredictable governance and the fact that these countries have far more critical problems to solve.

[Hannah Ajala]

It will probably be at the absolute bottom of the list to prioritize something like this where there's already issues like infrastructure, poverty, unemployment, water, sanitation, sustainability, the list goes on. So with that instability, people found stability in romance scamming, or scamming in general. And I think the more that technology and the Internet improved, it just made it more attainable for people to keep on doing. I mean, no one is born bad, no one is born evil, no one is born with, you know, the intention to steal from others. But that is the result for many people when they just can't see a way out in a system that's repetitively failing them.

[Josh Dean]

Hannah is clear about the aims of the Love Janessa podcast.

[Hannah Ajala]

It's raising awareness about the dangers of romance, scamming the lives that it ruins, and the importance of how careful we have to be when pursuing anything, romantic or not, online.

[Josh Dean]

But I think it's right that the final thought should go to people like Simon and Roberto, who fell in love with a lie and saw their lives ripped apart long before the inevitable, embarrassing, crushing moment of realization.

[Hannah Ajala]

Some had medical conditions, some were already not in a great place with their family. There were, mentally in the space where they're preparing to spend the rest of their lives with someone. So it was a gradual deterioration of their lives.

[Josh Dean]

I mean, viewed through that lens, the takeaway here isn't all that bad.

[Hannah Ajala]

Love can make you imagine things. But then, oddly, it's quite warming and surprising to know how many human beings are willing to wear their heart on their sleeve like that.

[Josh Dean]

Our ability to love is our greatest strength as a species, but it's our greatest vulnerability, too. It's something we all have, something that connects us, something that catfishers exploit. Still, it's never a bad thing to be reminded of our capacity to let people in to believe. Because if we don't, we'll all be alone.

[Hannah Ajala]

We're all humans, and we all absolutely make mistakes. And it's been great spending time with those people.

[Joe Barrett]

And I just found it very fascinating how our digital lives are so manipulated by our very human, very animal psychology. We can't stop being human.

[Josh Dean]

Chameleon is a production of Campside Media and Audio Chuck. It's hosted by me, Josh Dean, and was written and reported by me and Joe Barrett. It was produced by Joe Barrett. Our associate producer is Emma Simonhoff. Sound design and mix by Tiffany Dimac. Themed by Ewin lytramuin and Mark McAdams. Our production manager is Ashley Warren. Campside's executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriadis, Matt Sher, and me, Josh Dean. And finally, if I can ask a few favors before sending you on your way today, please rate, follow and review Chameleon on your favorite podcast platforms to help spread the word. I know everyone says this, but it's true. Ratings and reviews really do help, and if you have any feedback, tips or story ideas, you can email [e-mail] or leave us a message at a special number we've set up 20174, 3, 8, 3, 6, 8. Add a plus one if you're outside North America. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.

[Ashley Flowers]

I think Chuck would approve. Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers.

[Britt]

And I'm Britt. And if you're on the edge of your seat listening to this show, Crime Junkie needs to be your next listen.

[Ashley Flowers]

Every Monday, I dive into a new true crime case that our reporting team has been on the ground looking into. From lesser known disappearances to the most chilling cases hitting the headlines. And I'm gonna walk you through it the way I tell my best friend, because, well, that's what I'm doing.

[Joe Barrett]

Yeah, that's me.

[Britt]

And I'm right there with you as we listen together, react to every wild detail. And of course, I ask all the.

[Ashley Flowers]

Questions and I'm gonna have the answers because we have case files, we're talking to detectives and family members, and we're gonna stay focused on the facts.

[Britt]

So if you're not already listening to Crime Junkie, what are you waiting for? There are over 300 episodes available right.

[Ashley Flowers]

Now, and you can listen to new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.