Criminal Repair and Postcolonial Sovereignty in the Jamaican Lotto Scam, Dr. Jovan Scott Lewis

Structural adjustment continues to plague Jamaica with systemic and deepening poverty. I discuss how a group of young Black Jamaicans participated in what is known as the Jamaican lotto scam—an intricate scheme that targeted primarily elderly, White North Americans—to successfully mitigate these conditions. I examine the scam’s complex manipulation of Jamaican ICT through which scammers refashioned themselves and their country’s relationship to North America. I illustrate how scammers produce novel logics of capital, criminality, and Blackness to develop a radical formulary for postcolonial Black repair and postcolonial sovereignty.