The Kathy Lagoli emails explained..

Although this is only a guess, I think it most likely explains the spam emails that many of us received recently from Kathy Lagoli. It is actually a comment left on this blog by an Anonymous visitor, on my original post about the Lagoli spam emails..

Anonymous

I have different email addresses for different purposes. Folks: There is no "Kathy" or "she." It's a BOT (automated computer program) that scrapes email addresses from a variety of sites (blogs, ebay ads, facebook business pages, etc.) and then sends a short message (and question) that it hopes sounds relevant enough for you to reply. If you reply, then it knows a human is reading emails sent to that address and you will start getting spam (Viagra ads etc.) sent to that email. Luckily those who google the name FIRST and discover this blog will know to "mark as spam" in your email program and never reply. It's that simple.

Makes sense to me guys..

Sex, Lies and Black Magic

Channel 4's Unreported World last evening broadcast this about how human traffickers are using black magic to coerce and trap Nigerian women into a life of prostitution in Europe. I am informed via Twitter by Krishnan Guru Murthy, @krishgm, a news anchor at the channel, that the Unreported World programme is the only show on 4oD (4 on Demand) that is not geo-blocked.

krishgm @anengiyefa yes it's the only show on 4OD not geoblocked

about 2 hours ago via web in reply to anengiyefa

Follow the link and watch the film, it is available for 29 days yet. Click here to see it.

Basically, the film shows Nigerian women who are made to swear an oath of loyalty to their traffickers in an elaborate ritual that compels them to pay back extortionate sums of money. They feel bound by this oath and fear that should they break it, they will be cursed. It is suggested that as many as 20,000 Nigerian women work as prostitutes on the streets of Italy.

I think that the film provides valuable insight into a really important subject, but the attempt by the film's makers to blame this heinous activity on indigenous African spiritual tradition, misses the point completely and perhaps also plays into culturally oppressive stereotypes. Prostitution in Europe by African women is nothing to do with indigenous African cultural tradition. The real reasons for it are poverty, coupled with the demand in Europe for prostitutes.

There are prostitutes working in Western Europe who come from Russia, Moldova, Belarus and the Ukraine and as far afield as the Philippines and Vietnam. But to suggest that all of those women too have been subjected to an oath of loyalty by a babalawo (witch doctor) would clearly be nonsensical. The motive for all of these women, yes, including those from Nigeria, is money, the search for a better life and for many, the ability to support the families they leave behind in their home countries.

And while this may be their original intention, I did not see from the film that the lives of the families the women left behind in Nigeria were improved in anyway at all, since the families seemed still to be living in abject poverty, despite the fact that they had relatives working abroad.

The truth is that all over the world, poor people are being taken advantage of by the wealthy, through a globalised system of capitalism, which forces people to sell their souls in order to put food on the table. In Bangladesh, Afghanistan and others, it is normal for poor families to put to work children as young as 7 years of age, to contribute to the family income. In parts of Africa, out of poverty, some mothers are forced to sell their own children into slavery. This is the harsh reality for the poor in today's world.

I think that the makers of the film, rather than trying to blame African spirituality for prostitution in Europe, should have taken the time to explore the true causes of the problem. It is not surprising, nor is it unreasonable that the particular manifestation of this misfortune in Edo State in Nigeria, would be articulated in a characteristic and localised form, i.e., through a distortion of juju, which in fact is a part of the local traditions of the people.

See also Human Trafficking, the Nigerian Connection

Kathy Lagoli and my blog stats..

A few days ago I posted on this blog a warning about spam emails that some person named Kathy Lagoli had sent out, apparently to anyone whose email address she/he could get hold of. Unbeknown to me at time of posting, the Lagoli person was sending the same emails that I'd received to many others and as is to be expected, many of these people went searching on Google for the name 'Kathy Lagoli', just as I had done. However, by this time my post was already on Google and many of those who went searching for Kathy Lagoli wound up on my blog. This blog's sitemeter statistics for today tell the story:

Things I feel strongly about Site Summary
VISITS
	Total	29,866
	Average Per Day	66
	Average Visit Length	4:29
	Last Hour	68
	Today	1,476
	This Week	460
PAGE VIEWS
	Total	84,283
	Average Per Day	153
	Average Per Visit	2.3
	Last Hour	80
	Today	1,906
	This Week	1,073

As is clear from the above, the average number of visitors that I would receive on this blog per day is 66. Yet as I typed this blog post, there had already been a record breaking 1,476 visitors to the blog today, a number that normally would amount to something like my monthly total. There was even one hour during the afternoon when 110 visitors visited the blog within the hour. And not surprisingly, 99.8 percent of all these visitors came looking for more information about Kathy Lagoli. The 55 comments that they left behind are testimony to the extent to which Kathy Lagoli's spam emails were circulated..

Who is Kathy Lagoli?

I received an email today from someone who calls herself Kathy Lagoli. Her email address is kathylagoli@thingdiamond.com. The wording of the email is as follows:

Re: things i feel strongly about: women are heroes..

From:	Kathy Lagoli View Contact
To:	anengiyefa1@yahoo.com

---

Hello,

Would you be available to discuss this on the phone ?

kathy,

Innocently, I replied, as is the natural thing to do, even though I was somewhat surprised by the email. My reply:

From:	anengiyefa Add to Contacts
To:	Kathy Lagoli

---

Hello Kathy,

Of course. Can you give me a hint of what in particular the discussion will concern?

Regards

Anengiyefa

Then out of curiosity, I thought to google 'Kathy Lagoli' and the first item in my search was this post which I have set out in full below:

DO NOT OPEN ANY EMAIL FROM KATHY LAGOLI

Just wanted to let everyone know that today I received an email from someone named "Kathy Lagoli". The subject line contained an"re:" about one of my recent posts. The body of the email contained this message: "Would you be available to discuss this on the phone?" This comes after someone who has me on their contacts had their email account hacked into.

I didn't know what to think, so I didn't reply, then decided on a whim to google the name and came upon several sights that said they had received the exact same email, so it appears to be a scam of some sort....so DO NOT REPLY to any such emails.

Update: Just checking my traffic feed, there are TONS of people googling this name, so it would seem pretty widespread.

Thank heavens I did not divulge my telephone number, even though I am somewhat worried as to the possibility of some cyber criminal hacking into my email account through my reply.

At a Crossroads

I know of no one who has been faced with the situation that I am currently faced with and am therefore not able to draw from any other person's experiences in the very important choices that I am soon going to have to make.

The background to this is from a few years ago when intervention action was taken by my professional regulatory body into a firm at which I was a partner. The practice was closed down and all of the firm's partners were suspended from further practise. I have previously written about this on this blog here. Following the intervention, I alone of all the firm's former partners applied for the reinstatement of my practising certificate. My certificate was reinstated, but with the condition that I could not practise as a partner and was allowed to practise only in employment as an assistant, and in an employment for which the regulatory body had given prior approval, as there were supervisory and support requirements to be met by the prospective employer.

I was able to return to practise even while the regulatory body's investigations into the affairs of the now defunct firm were still in progress. Perhaps it was quite clear to the regulatory body that none of the factors which gave rise to the intervention into that firm were attributable to me personally, but instead to my former partners. And I enjoyed the staunch backing of my former boss, who stood by me and supported my application to return to practise.

The problem now is that I left the employ of my former boss, having entered into a fee-sharing arrangement with a different firm. By that arrangement, the firm purported to be satisfying the requirement for support and supervision imposed on my practising certificate, when in fact I was doing my own work. Suffice it to say that after a couple of months, the relationship with that firm too broke down. I found them crude, onerous and overbearing and thought of them as undeserving of my competence.

I cannot now return to my former boss, because he too has since run into difficulties with the regulatory body. So I am left high and dry, as I find that not many firms will accept me with such a cumbersome condition attached to my practising certificate. The reason is simple: the partners at those firms render themselves liable to disciplinary action for failure to supervise, in the event that something goes wrong; and this is not to mention the certain increase in their professional indemnity insurance premium as soon as the insurers become aware of my professional history. It is not surprising then that I have received the cold shoulder at the doors on which I have knocked.

So what are the choices? Well, I can either wait on the unemployment line until September when the disciplinary proceedings will be finalised, without an inkling as to the likely outcome of those proceedings; or I can consider making a clean break from the profession altogether and move in a completely different direction. The new academic session begins in September, so one must act promptly if one is to take advantage of it.

The fact of the matter is that whatever the outcome of the disciplinary proceedings, the intervention into my former firm (and the reasons thereof), will always be recorded against me. It is sufficient merely to state in one's application that one was a partner at a firm that was intervened, for professional indemnity insurance premiums to quadruple. And it is professional misconduct not to disclose this in your insurance application. It is irrelevant that I was not directly responsible.

Even if the conditions are removed from my practising certificate after the disciplinary proceedings, I shall be totally unable to afford to pay all of the regulatory body's costs for bringing those disciplinary proceedings against me, pay the likely financial penalty to be imposed by the disciplinary tribunal and then thereafter, also pay for the insurance needed to enter into practice on my own. Any prospective employers too will be wary of the potential increase in their insurance liability if they were to employ me.

All in all, forging ahead in the same direction portends a very rough time ahead, which makes the case for a career change. I am now considering going back to college or university to retrain. This seems drastic, I know, but my view is that some situations require radical action, and this is one of those situations. I am not sure that I am willing to spend the remainder of my career encumbered with responsibility for the acts of others, my former partners, who in any event are themselves no longer interested in practising. Incidentally, one of them, the major culprit, fled the jurisdiction with the proceeds of his deeds, and the latest I heard of him is that he lost his bid to be elected to the Nigerian Senate..