Title: 
Interview scripts about the perspectives of cybercrime offenders on the moral and illegal narratives of cybercrime in Ghana
Author: 
Abubakari Yushawu

Aim of the Project
The aim of the study was to investigate the perspectives of Sakawa boys on the illegal and immoral narratives of cybercrime. This elucidated how cybercrime is conceptualized among offenders in the nexuses of legality and morality. Some narratives that were presented during the interview included, but not limited to, how cybercrime offenders define illegality and immorality, their perspectives on adhering to the legal issues and sense of morality, conditions to overlook such ethical principles, and how they position the activities of cybercrime within the framework of legality and morality. 
Research Method
The study aligns with qualitative research design methods. Therefore, the methods sampling, data collection, and analysis were all qualitatively accounted. 
Population and Sampling
The target population of the study was active online romance swindlers in Ghana. Therefore, only those who are actively involved in the digital romance fraud industry were recruited for the study. Overall, 12 participants were recruited through contemporary snowball sampling techniques. Though traditional snowball sampling was proposed for the project, the reality on the field led to the reconstruction and refinement of the methods. Most scammers exhibited hesitant and reluctant to participate when interpersonal referrals and non-scammers’ referrals were adopted. These groups of scammers either perceive the researcher as a spy or did not want to participate because of the Eurocentric nature of the researcher’s host institution. Yet still, other scammers wanted the researcher to pay before they can offer interviews. However, the researcher could not offer any monetary benefits that were demanded since the project did not receive any external funding. Therefore, the researcher adopted a more contemporary approach to snowball sampling, such as leaders’ endorsement and methodological grooming approaches. The researcher spend several days grooming four leaders in the online romance fraud industry through familiarization of research objectives, participants’ rights and obligations, safety, anonymity and pseudonymity, and the option of participants determining the time and place of the interviews. The leaders – after being convinced about the position of the researcher and the safety of participant, recommended other scammers to take part in the project. The researcher, after the recommendation from leaders, was able to get the attention of other scammers – where he could convince them to take part in the study. These resulted in the recruitment of twelve active scammers.
Data Collection Tools
The researcher adopted both informal conversation or unstructured interviews and semi-structured interviews as the primary tools for the data collection. Whereas ten participants allowed for recording, two participants did not consent to recording. Therefore, the researcher took reflective notes after each interview with these participants. There were two interview sessions for most of the participants; however, some of the participants had more than two sessions due to interruptions during interviews. Overall, the interview scripts presented here are extensive notes that are taken from the interview recording with some quotes from participants. All the interview scrips are pseudonymized. Each interview was conducted in both English and Dagbani (predominant language in Tamale, Ghana), given that participants switch between these languages when they are talking. The researcher adopted to the same tradition by switching between English and Dagbani.  
The interviews circulated around participants’ notion of illegality and immorality in the context of their socioeconomic and political environment. The interviews also focus on how they perceive the act of online romance fraud perpetration with respect to their collective understanding of morality and legality. Through an initial interview protocol was designed to be used as a guide to the interview process, the informal and unstructured interviews offered more approach to collecting in-depth data from participants. However, the items on the interview protocol were still used to data additional data that was not mentioned in the unstructured interviews. The protocol was also used to clarify some information from the unstructured interviews. 
Time and places of data collection:
The data collection was conducted in Northern Ghana from 9th December 2020 to 25th January 2021. Whereas this was the time frame of the data collection, the venues of interviews were determined by participants. Some interviews were done in the scammers’ residences, others interviews were conducted at restaurants (where the researcher pay for food and drinks during the interview sessions), ghettos, and the researcher’s residence.