Hackers of the heart: digital sorcery and virtual intimacy in Côte d’Ivoire Sasha Newell [F]eymania [con artistry], maraboutage [sorcery] and internet scams can be interpreted as Africa’s contribution to the global economy of the occult world. (Ndjio 2012: 294) 1 In Côte d’Ivoire, a brouteur is an online scammer, a transformation of the infam- ous Nigerian 419er, only here the ploy does not rely on stereotypes of African pol- itical turmoil and wealthy corrupt politicians, but rather on the production of virtual intimacy. The brouteur relies on the capacity of the internet to transfer affective connection, but augments this possibility by shapeshifting; using false social media profiles that often cross racial, gender, class and geographic bound- aries, they enter into long-distance romances with their targets which they build and maintain for months, even years, waiting for opportunities to invent emergen- cies that require money to be wired, or sometimes twisting the relationship into one of blackmail. 2 For this kind of operation to function properly, it is necessary to produce genuine relationships of intimacy and trust that require regular and reciprocal communication, often on multiple media platforms. To provide an example of how the scammers operate, I offer the testimony of a French victim of brouteurs who complained about their case on the website Arnacoeurs: I was scammed for four months by a woman claiming to be a Brazilian living in Abidjan. Out of work after the accidental death of [her] companion, [she] asked me to send her money to repatriate her to France. There followed four false attempts, blocked first by a lack of traveller’s cheques, then a stolen Ivoirian souvenir mask with a value of €3,500 that she bought from a merchant. I had to pay €4,500 to keep her out of prison and her return fare to Abidjan, then her traveller’s cheques worth €2,500 were stolen, plus her plane ticket and hotel. Total: €11,000 and the woman is still in Abidjan. What do I have to do to get my money back? Sasha Newell is director of the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In the past he has taught in the US at NYU, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Virginia, Holy Cross and North Carolina State University. The author of The Modernity Bluff: crime, consumption, and citizenship in Côte d’Ivoire, he studies accumulation, materiality, magic and media in both Côte d’Ivoire and the US. Email: Alexander.Newell@ulb.be 1 All translations in this article are my own unless otherwise noted. 2 It should be pointed out that while the world of broutage was dominated by young men, women could be called in to provide advice on feminine communication, perform needed female voices, or even run phones dedicated to these artificial relationships (Cassiman 2019). Another brouteur described bringing female accomplices to meet a mark who came all the way to Abidjan to meet his internet amour. Some women are active brouteuses in their own right, however (for example, see the discussion at <http://abidjantv.net/fait-divers/cote-divoire- cybercriminalite-elles-effectuent-107-retraits-avec-des-cartes-didentites-volees/>). In comparison with the face-to-face criminality in 2001, virtual scamming was relatively accessible to women, although there were still unbalanced consequences to their public reputation. Africa 91 (4) 2021: 661–85 doi:10.1017/S0001972021000449 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972021000449 Published online by Cambridge University Press