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Although migration brokers are greatly admired public figures in Anglophone Cameroon, evidence of deception abound. How do aspiring migrants deal with the risk of being scammed by the migration brokers? The article develops an alternative way to conceptualise the credibility of migration brokers – not in terms of the supposed “legal” or “illegal” nature of their work, but in terms of the local distinction between dokimen, feymen and big men. Starting from an emic terminology, this paper offers a new scale to assess the “power” of migration brokers, beyond the static notions of smuggling and trafficking. The article is based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Anglophone Cameroon between 2007 and 2010. It sheds a particular light on the work of a development organisation engaging in “travel consultations”.