This post featured on popular website Slashdot.org yesterday, which drove a considerable amount of new readers, and subsequently over 1,000 comments, to the site.

Obviously I am unable to moderate all of them, so have taken the difficult decision not to post any of them, and for equality’s sake, to remove existing comments and close commenting. I would like to thank each and every person who took the time to comment.

I have faced quite some criticism over my handling of the interview with “John”, particularly of the fact that I became angry during the second part and cut the interview short. There has also been doubt expressed as to the legitimacy of the interview, with some readers questioning whether it took place at all.

I would like to address some of those comments here.

1) The interview took place as I reported it, although not verbatim. “John” is from Nigeria and his grasp of English is not great. I took copious notes throughout both (lengthy) conversations and had to construct the interview as it appears, substituting slang phrases such as “Mugu” (Big Fool) for “Victim”, and “Oga” for “gang-master”. This was done for the purposes of clarity and to get across “John’s” responses in an easy to understand manner, without bogging down the interview with translations and explanations of Pidgin English or Igbo phrases. This may have given the overall impression of a “scripted” interview, but it was anything but. You’ll either take my word for that, or not. The decision is yours.

2) I am not a trained journalist, just a guy who wants to help people not get scammed. During my research of online fraud I spoke to a number of victims who had lost everything as a result of being taken in by scammers just like “John”. “John” showed a palpable lack of empathy for the situations of these people, blaming them for their greed and when he spoke about “recovery scams”, hitting these people for a second time by building up their hopes of recovering at least some of their money and rebuilding their lives following their disastrous losses then yes, I became angry and this coloured the rest of the interview. I fully admit that I should not have allowed my emotions to get the better of me, but I did, and took the decision to terminate the interview at that point. If “John” calls again then I will attempt to continue the interview with a more detached outlook. If my early termination of the conversation has disappointed you, or made you feel that I was unprofessional, then I empathise.

On reflection, I hope that “John” does contact me again. If he does, I will try to do better.

Thanks for reading,

Scam-Detective