'Somali pirates' trick journalists

The story begins in the slums of Eastleigh, a sprawling suburb of Nairobi in Kenya and home to a huge Somali community.

There I met Adan. He and his friends are running an industry that had been fooling some of the best journalists from around the world. Their business? Pretending to be pirates.

"We pretend because we have the talent," Adan told me. "They (journalists) go to the boss and say we need pirates. The boss comes to us and says the white men need pirates. So he says 'pretend to be a pirate'."

Somali pirates have been much in demand and where there is demand, someone is already to supply. Tapping into that demand, a group of men built a small industry: pirating the pirates.

Scam

The scam is coordinated by the "fixer". He offers journalists the opportunity to interview real live pirates - for a fee. Touting his local knowledge he promises to reach parts of the community a western journalist never could.

There then follows an elaborate scheme to convince journalists it is all legitimate. The "fixer" drives westerners around, sometimes for days in search of the elusive pirates, telling journalists its too dangerous yet to approach them.

As well as trying to convince westerners that they are genuine, it is also about making lots of money: the more days they work, the more they earn.

The scheme culminates in sit-down interviews with the so-called "pirates" - interviews that have made it into the venerable pages of Time magazine and been broadcast in documentaries, one of which was reportedly shown in some 18 countries across the world.

'Fake pirates'

The "fake pirates", including Adan, are not even Somalis. Many of them are Kenyan. Many are Boran, an ethnic group that lives in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya.

In his day job, Adan works in a restaurant, but the money he makes acting the pirate is far greater.

Adan was delighted to tell me how much he makes. "My daily fee is $200. I depend on myself. I'm an asset, not a liability."

Adan is relatively new into the industry. However, "Bashir" - not his real name - has been in the trade a long time. He was harder to convince to come clean but eventually admitted he was no pirate but an "actor". He now says he cannot believe anyone thought he was a pirate in the first place.