But new research challenges that template. There are different kinds of coercion.
Physical coercion is visible: locked doors, armed guards, confiscated documents. Spiritual or psychological coercion is invisible: the fear of consequences no one can see, but many believe. One restrains the body. The other restrains the mind. The outcome is the same.
In my most recent work as a cybercrime researcher I looked at a cybercrime training academy in Nigeria, one of the underground schools that recruit and train young men in digital fraud. In a recent study on coercion I show how control, pressure and exploitation can operate within these illicit training spaces.
For the research I drew on three sources: conviction case files (court judgments, charge sheets, witness statements, exhibits); conversations with three officers directly involved in the investigation and prosecution; and courtroom observations of all 12 defendants’ proceedings.
Understanding what drives recruitment into cybercrime academies is not a defence of fraud, which does great harm. It is a precondition for dismantling it.
What is a hustle kingdom?
Internet fraudsters use the term “hustle kingdoms ” to describe their own illicit schools. Our analysis of Nigerian conviction case files, supplemented by ethnographic research and officer interviews, revealed that hustle kingdoms are semi-structured cybercrime academies , operating covertly in Nigerian and Ghanaian cities. They have hierarchies, curricula, and a governing authority known as the “chairman”. Learners are trained in hacking, romance fraud and business email compromise schemes . No upfront fees are charged. Instead, a percentage of scam earnings is extracted later, creating a debt-like arrangement from day one.
Recruits are typically young men aged 16 to 32, most with only secondary education. They enter through social networks, via friends, relatives, or opportunistic recruiters. One 18-year-old explained simply:
These academies did not emerge randomly. When formal routes to education and employment are blocked, young people seek alternatives. A sociologist, Robert K. Merton , calls this “innovation”: pursuing culturally endorsed goals, such as financial success, through illegitimate but accessible means.
Hustle kingdoms exploit that gap deliberately, offering free training where universities charge fees that most families cannot afford. Poverty, youth unemployment, and absent social welfare systems are the soil in which these schools grow.
These findings come from my analysis of 12 Economic and Financial Crimes Commission case files , specifically witness statements and court testimony in Nigeria. Hustle kingdom learners were not locked up, yet they could not leave. Movement was restricted to narrow, authorised purposes. Communication with the outside world was banned. Food was provided, but money and information about earnings were withheld. One 25-year-old recalled being told that food was free, calls were not permitted, and his percentage would only be disclosed after money was collected.
This is layered control, not visible captivity. Each mechanism reinforces the others. Isolation prevents learners from verifying whether threats are real. Financial dependency removes the practical means to exit. Spiritual intimidation seals the architecture .
The spiritual threats centred on juju, a traditional west African practice with deep roots in healing and community life. Within the hustle kingdom, however, it was deliberately weaponised.
Policy and justice implications
Treating individuals as fully voluntary offenders carries real costs. Sentences may be disproportionate to the actual agency. Victim-offender overlap goes unrecognised. Rehabilitation programmes designed for willing offenders miss the mark entirely. They assume the participant chose freely. A learner who entered under spiritual threat, financial dependency and restricted movement has a fundamentally different profile. The programme addresses the wrong problem.
Sentencing : Judges should weigh evidence of movement restrictions, communication bans and spiritual threats when assessing culpability, not dismiss them as cultural colour.
Cybercrime is one of Africa’s most rapidly expanding criminal threats, generating estimated annual losses of US$3 billion continent-wide . Similarly, cybercrime enforcement is accelerating across Africa south of the Sahara . Classification decisions made today will harden into judicial precedent. If coercion is only recognised when it looks like a south-east Asian scam compound , constrained actors across west Africa will be sentenced as if they had chosen freely.
Understanding it better could make sentencing proportionate and rehabilitation effective. The structural conditions that feed recruitment into these academies also need to be addressed.
Written by Suleman Lazarus, Visiting Fellow at the Mannheim Centre for Criminology at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
