An Inappropriate Insider in the Field: Autoethnographic Reflections on Accessing Active Online Romance Fraudsters in Ghana

Due to the prevalence of online romance fraud, especially Sakawa in Ghana and Yahoo-Yahoo in Nigeria, scholars have become interested in studying active online romance fraudsters within their social settings. This article provides an autoethnographic reflection on the complexities of researching active online fraudsters in Ghana, commonly referred to as Sakawa actors. It situates this reflection within ethnographic debates that conceptualize field access as negotiated, political, and shaped by asymmetrical power relations, while demonstrating how researcher positionality is further complicated by the researcher’s shifting status between insider and outsider contexts, as well as by their moral histories with interlocutors. The article discusses the interplay between researcher positionality as an inappropriate insider , negotiation of access, building trust, and managing offenders’ skepticism toward research. Through this, it contributes to the broader criminological methodological repertoire for studying active deviant actors in their natural settings. The article highlights the importance of methodological adaptability, reflexivity, cultural awareness, and ethical sensitivity in navigating both trust and mistrust when researching online deviant populations in the Global South, particularly in African contexts. It also offers practical recommendations by advocating for context-sensitive methodologies, flexible consent procedures, and sustained researcher reflexivity to strengthen future studies of online fraudsters and other deviant populations, especially in the Global South.