As a teenager, Kasim was the star striker of his school’s football team in Ghana, earning him the moniker Starflex. But the 22-year-old has since abandoned both his studies and football for a vocation that keeps him up at night: finding and luring victims into online romance scams. In one bedroom in Accra, Starflex and his two friends Suleiman, 19, and Patrick, 18, huddle over their phones and laptops, exchanging intimate messages with “pals”, their code name for potential victims they meet on dating sites. To bait a suitor, they comb Facebook and Instagram, swiping photos of influencers, actresses and...