Understanding Ability, Opportunity, And Motivation Rationalization In Online Romance Scams

Abstract

Advancements in information and communication technology (ICT) have made it easier for various public and private sectors to perform effectively. However, the growth in ICTs is accompanied by new and emerging challenges for people and countries to contend with, notably cybercrime. Cybercrime is described as the use of computers and computer-related technologies, which includes the internet, to commit crimes such as fraud, child pornography, identity theft, and invasion of privacy. Despite the borderless nature of these crimes, one type of crime reverberates in West Africa; online romance scams – a scheme in which scammers pretend to have genuine affection for victims in order to acquire their love and then use that goodwill to persuade the victims in order to exploit them. While cyberspace in relation to cybercrimes is made up of three players – attackers, defence, and victims, extensive evaluation of literature shows a paucity of studies that consolidate evidence from the attackers’ perspectives. It is, therefore, essential to investigate the triggers of attackers’ behaviours in order to understand the mechanisms that unite to cause cybercrime to occur. The dearth of studies that take the perpetrators’ dimension into perspective implies a lack of studies that explore their behavioural dynamics as well as the strategies they employ in exploiting their victims. As a result, this study developed three research objectives to fill these gaps. The first objective is to unearth the mechanisms that trigger cybercriminal behaviours. The second is to explore the dynamics of cybercriminal behaviours, and the third is to explore the strategies that online romance scammers employ in finding, priming, and defrauding their victims. To achieve the study’s objectives, this research consolidates three theories: Routine Activity Theory (RAT), Motivation-Opportunity-Ability (MOA) framework, and Neutralisation Theory (NT). The combination of these theories was in an effort to address their weaknesses in relation to cybercrime studies. Based on existing fraud studies, this thesis operationalised the conditions that need to be present for a crime to take effect, leading to the development of a conceptual framework. To put this into perspective, the study draws on the tenets of critical realism and uses a qualitative single case study approach to investigate the activities of a cybercrime syndicate in Ghana. The choice for this approach was informed by the fact that using a single case study allows the researcher to question old theoretical relationships and investigate new ones, resulting in a more thorough study. As a site for such research, Ghana is not out of place, as sufficient anecdotal evidence indicates that the country, along with Nigeria, is one of the main hubs for West African scams. The first research objective sought to unearth the mechanisms that trigger cybercriminal behaviours. In this regard, four mechanisms were elicited through theoretical re-description and retroduction. These are motivation, opportunity, ability, and neutralisation. Concerning motivation, the study revealed an interplay of various socio-economic factors, including unemployment, low-level income, low-level education, and quick money syndrome, as the primary driving forces behind the commission of online romance scams. Regarding opportunity, the research found that online romance scam perpetrators take advantage of weaknesses in regulatory laws to commit romance scams. Concerning ability, the study pointed out two forms: social and technical abilities. A representational finding from this dimension indicated that scammers hold a high level of interactional social ability that aids them in keeping their victims believing seemingly legitimate truths, which turn out to be lies. Whereas ability is a trigger on its own, a leveraged ability becomes an opportunity when a technical ability is outsourced. Lastly, concerning their neutralisation strategies, this research suggested that perpetrators moderate the severity of their offences by engaging in selective social comparisons. The second objective sought to explore the behavioural dynamics of cybercriminal behaviours. Findings in this regard brought to the fore three-stage behavioural dynamics: creation, maturation, and decline. The creation stage was noted in the study as the starting stage of an individual’s ingress into the commission of online crimes. The research found that at this stage, cybercriminals possess little to no skills in committing cybercrimes and have no clear sense of direction. Perpetrators further graduate to the maturation stage when they begin to engage in carefully calculated multiplicity of internet crimes. While the maturation stage may last for a while, the decline stage sets in when perpetrators are unsuccessful in their fraud attempts due to an interplay of various factors, including security upgrades on dating and e-commerce platforms. Traditional and other forms of depravities also become attractive at this stage. These findings’ uniqueness stems from the fact that cybercriminal behavioural dynamics in relation to romance scam seems unclear in prior literature, making this research perhaps one of the first. The results of the third objective revealed two approaches that cybercrime perpetrators employ in finding, priming, and defrauding their victims. These included scammer-led and victim-led strategies. The scammer-led strategy involves instances where scammers pose as men and lead their victims (mostly females) into presumably romantic relationships that later turn out to be fake. While this approach has been featured in prior literature from the victims’ point of view, this study exposed some key elements worthy of note. Such include the use of tests to ascertain the legitimacy of the relationships and the use of victims’ addresses as a transit for shipping items obtained through e-commerce frauds. In the victim-led strategy, scammers pose as young ladies and allow victims (mostly males) to make demands in the form of naked photographs and webcam videos in exchange for money. Scammers who use this strategy sting their victims by blackmailing them. Again, this finding is unique because the victim-led approach in the scammers’ persuasive techniques has arguably not been documented in previous studies, making this study a pioneering one in that regard. This research makes the following contributions in terms of research, theory, methodology, practice, and policy. The study contributes to research by expanding the romance scam persuasive techniques, which has hitherto been developed using data from victims and dating platforms. The study further contributes to theory by developing and empirically testing a conceptual framework on how romance scam perpetrators rationalise their motivation, opportunities, and abilities. This was done by combining the RAT, MOA, and NT. This was a necessary move in that it contributes to addressing the debate surrounding the RAT for its inability to comprehensively address online crimes and also its inability to explain why offenders become motivated to commit crimes. The development of the framework is not limited to romance scams, as it may serve as a reference framework for studying other forms of online crimes (e.g., cyberbullying, hacking, pharming, digital piracy, etc.). Concerning the study’s contribution to methodology, this thesis aggregated primary evidence directly from romance scam perpetrators in an effort to ostensibly fill the gap in the lack of offender-side data representation in cybercrime literature. Regarding practice, this study presents rich information to developers and managers of dating platforms on the strategies online crime perpetrators employ to circumvent security features. Concerning policy, the study provides adequate information for law enforcement agencies and ISPs on the need for collaboration to combat cybercrime in Ghana and perhaps, West Africa. Notable outputs from this thesis are publications in two conference proceedings and two book chapter publications. One of the conference publications titled “Rationalising Online Romance Fraud: In the Eyes of the Offender” was nominated for the best paper award at the 2020 Americas Conference on Information Systems.