Degrees of entrapment in Hustle Kingdoms: the spectrum of coercion in cybercrime schools

Cybercrime in Anglophone West Africa is generally framed as voluntary, with offenders portrayed as willing participants in fraud. This Brief Report challenges that narrative by examining coercion within a Hustle Kingdom, a documented cybercrime apprenticeship academy in Nigeria. We analysed Economic and Financial Crimes Commission conviction case files using qualitative documentary analysis. Learners’ participation was shaped by constrained agency and enforced compliance. Control operated through restrictions on movement, bans on communication, and rationed access to money and information. These forms of coercion were reinforced by threats linked to juju magic, a traditional West African spiritual practice involving oaths and ritual objects. While juju serves healing and protection as much as harm, it was instrumentalised here as a technology of fear, and was organised under the authority of a ‘Chairman.’ These mechanisms produced fear, dependency, and restricted autonomy without consistent visible restraint. By comparing this case with accounts of coercion in trafficking and Southeast Asian scam compounds, the article complicates binary classifications that cast cyber actors as either voluntary offenders or enslaved victims. We propose a spectrum model of coercion and outline implications for culpability assessments, sentencing, safeguarding, and rehabilitation in cybercrime training settings.