One day last month, friends and family from around the world flooded me with messages alerting me to some suspicious activity in my yahoo e-mail account – indeed, it had been hijacked. The hacker e-mailed my contact list in my name with a desperate plea in broken English for several thousand dollars to be sent immediately to London, where I was supposedly stranded. The imposter changed my password, so I could not regain control of my account and inform my contacts of the turn of events.

Efforts to close the account were futile; the “yahoo teams” were not going to resolve the situation. In the meantime, the imposter sent personalized letters to family and friends who responded to “my” desperate plea for help. He assured them that it was truly me asking for the money, in notes friends described as “creepy.”

Increasingly curious about the person who had leapt so unexpectedly into my life, I created a new e-mail account for the sole purpose of communicating with the hacker:

Dear “Janna,”

Actually, I would be surprised if your name was Janna since I am Janna L Bowman, the creator of jannalbowman@yahoo.com and user of the account until it was appropriated last Wednesday. As one with little computer savvy, I have to hand it to you; you must be intelligent, creative, and persistent.

I also hear you saying that you need money. I have no reason to doubt the truthfulness of this claim. I’ve crossed paths with many people here in Colombia, South America, who believe that their life circumstances force them outside of the law. Farmers grow coca, which is processed into cocaine, because they don’t see any viable option in the legal market and they want to feed their families. Young people pick up a weapon and join a warring armed group not because of any ideology necessarily, but because it’s a job and represents some power. Greed and selfishness are also powerful motivating factors.

I’ve been wondering what your life is like. What are the life experiences that led you to your current activities? Do you have a family to support? Do enough people respond to your pleas for help that you are able to sustain yourself and those you care about? Do you enjoy phishing and hacking into accounts and corresponding with strangers who respond to the desperate appeals?

I seriously considered giving you a small sum of money, but I don’t currently have a credit card. (My wallet was stolen while I was getting off the bus with my baby recently.)

I confess that the fraud is upsetting and disorienting for me. It is extremely frustrating to lose my contact list and sad to have years of personal correspondence with people and experiences that are important to me ripped from my life. There is also a sense of personal violation and loss of control that comes with the e-mail account and identity theft. Something of my sense of loss would be redeemed if I could know something about your life and why you are doing this, since our paths may very well never have crossed were it not for this serendipitous encounter.

Janna L Bowman

The result? After exchanging two letters (below) I’ve left the conversation by the wayside. It strikes me as ironic that he began the first e-mail response by offering his “truth”:

Dear Friend,

Thanks for the message, well i must tell you the truth of it. I’m a man of 28 years old and i graduated from a well know University here in the United Kingdom but i wouldn’t mention the name of the school due to some reasons. After i finished my accademic session i met some group of people when i was seeking for job and they introduced me into a secret business which i wouldn’t disclose as well. I joined them but later found out that they are using my intelligence for the job and i decided to quit and start doing this as a job. I’m the bread and butter of my family but i have nothing to give to them so for that reason i started doing this. If you can send me somethin i would be very happy and i pray that God will bless you too. [sic]

Thanks,

Your Secret Friend.

Since I had not mentioned anything of God, it caught my attention that he did. I asked him about it in my next e-mail. The imposter was clearly not a native English speaker, and I asked him about his country of origin as well. Also in this second e-mail I proposed that one of us provide the other with a token sum based on a needs assessment process:

Dear secret friend,

It’s really interesting to me that you bring God into this. What led you to do that? Do you consider yourself a person of faith? I’m a Christian myself, a pacifist Mennonite more specifically. What about you?

Also, what is your country of origin? I mentioned that I live in Colombia but I’m from the U.S. You are living in the U.K. , but I suspect you are not from there.

Would you be so kind as to give me my contact list and the password to my original yahoo account so that I can use it once again? I notice that you opened a new account in my name. Will you tell me about that please? Have you lost access to my jannalbowman@yahoo.com account?

I earn approximately $1,000 a month and have a baby daughter. What do your income and financial needs look like? I suggest that based on a financial needs assessment one of us provide the other with a token donation. How does that sound to you?

Peace and hope,

Janna

A week or so after I sent my letter, the hacker responded with the following.

Dear Friend,

How are you? I’m very sorry for the late response. Well i understand all what you’ve said. I’m here in United Kingdom because i was born and brought up here but am a Gahnian. so anything assistance you wish to render financially would be appreciated. I have access to your mail yahoo account but unfortunately all your contact list has lost. So tell me what we can do as i really need money to feed myself and also i have a part time course am offering and i need money to pay for my tuition fee.

I’ll be looking forward to read from you, [sic]

Thanks and God Bless you!

Your Secret Friend.

I am not persuaded. More than the extent to which the conditions described may or may not reflect his reality, the fact that he lied about having access to my contact list — which I requested that he return to me — and continued to send personalized solicitation e-mails to my friends in my name while we carried on the exchange discouraged my efforts at cyberspace restorative justice. While the desperate plea for money is persistent, the lack of any acknowledgment of wrongs committed, harm done, or obligations that might ensue are a put-off. But I may pick up the conversation with my “secret friend” again; it is my turn to write.

The real Janna Hunter-Bowman works for Mennonite Central Committee in Bogotá, Colombia, as the coordinator of the Documentation and Advocacy Program for Justapaz.