I recently struck up a friendship a Nigerian scammer. After jerking him around for awhile, I broke him out of his script. Rather than blocking me or cursing me, I found a moment of humanity. I told him that I understand the desperation of his situation, but that the people he was most likely to scam successfully would be others in similarly difficult situations.

Suddenly, I was talking to a real person. A young man in an impossibly poor country with few other options...facing the loss of his already meager accommodations and the prospect of begging on the streets. A young man whose heart still hurt him when he attempted to exploit others. One who'd not yet been so jaded by years of such activity. I have cautiously continued talking to him and learning about his situation. He's respected every boundary I've placed to protect myself, and not pushed me to give him anything, even preemptively rejecting what he interpreted as an attempt to send him gift cards at one point, when he misread the intent of my questions about the mechanics of the scam he had tried on me.

I learned he is quite skilled at designing and producing beautiful traditional garments, but has been unable to find a work that would allow him to take care of himself.

As I've learned about him and built trust, I've chosen to send him a trivial (for me) amount of money to improve his immediate situation. If he continues to act in good faith, I'm going to invest a bit more (but still an amount I'd be comfortable losing) to buy him a sewing machine and help him rent a space to live and work in for the next year. For reference, the total amount is less than half a month's rent for me.

I'm asking around to see if people I know might be interested in ordering his clothing, and if he successfully delivers the garments they commission, I'll build and host a website for him to begin selling online and work to help him find other customers. It may not only lift him out of abject poverty, but give him to opportunity to elevate others around him and save them from the same spiral of despair in which he found himself...which would mean fewer grandmothers and vulnerable people being scammed in the future.

Granted, he could be running a long con and masterfully manipulating me at every turn...but even if so, I won't regret choosing empathy over judgement and anger, if only for the chance that it might make the world a slightly better place...even if just for one young man in a small city on the other side of the world.