Baiting Nigerian scammers for fun (not so much for profit)

[Are_grits_groceries]

Who are scam baiters, and why do they bother trying to give scammers the runaround? Ars explores the flourishing communities of scam baiters who help each other do everything they can to waste scammers' time, including enticing them to get ridiculous tattoos and sending them on treks across Africa for nonexistent cash.

When your hobby is baiting 419 scammers (also known as Nigerian scammers or advance-fee fraudsters), a death threat isn't cause for concern—it's a trophy worth bragging about to your friends.

Scam baiters are the vigilante enforcers who come together to waste hours, weeks, or months of 419 scammers' lives for nothing more than the satisfaction of knowing that they are distracting them from real victims. Though the world of 419 scams has existed since long before the Internet, people continue to fall for scammers in droves—certainly, scammers are making millions of dollars every year by promising money, goods, and romance that they never deliver on. That's part of why scam baiting has actually become a somewhat popular pastime online, with thousands of users flocking to scam baiting forums to share stories and ideas on how to string along more scammers. And hey, why not? Most of us end up spending too much time screwing around on the Internet anyway—these folks just use that time to make scammers miserable.

But when you hear stories like this, it makes you wonder. "I get death threats on regular basis," a student who goes by -C- told Ars. "Death threats are not uncommon and are actually considered achievements: they are a testament to the fact that the baiter managed to annoy his/her scammer nicely."

Why would you want to start baiting scammers?
When the scammer sends you a fake passport that looks like it was made by a blind hamster with a piece of charcoal in ten seconds, you praise it and say it really helps you to build trust.Who are these people? As it turns out, the scam-baiter demographic is more diverse than one might think, though much of the reasoning for participating is the same. "My initial reason for baiting was to give myself an outlet for the practical jokes that I am 'too old' to play on my dog/little sister/friends/neighbor's cat," a 32-year-old baiter who goes by blah told Ars. "But after I joined 419eater, I realized that we actually do make an impact on the entire scamming business by running interference and wasting these scammer's time."

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/05/baiting-nigerian-scammers-for-fun-not-so-much-for-profit.ars

Heh!!

[ck4829]

1. I did it once - It was pretty funny

I guy with all his emails named benkim(something) tried to scam me. He wanted me to go to a bank, cash a check from a bogus company, take the money "that was for me", send him the rest, and give him the tracking numbers for the check. Only problem with that was, he'd get REAL money, and when the bank caught on to what happened, I would be held accountable for the fraud.

The only problem with his little scam is that I kept reporting his accounts to Yahoo for fraud, and I have to give them props for working so fast on this.

So I would report his account to Yahoo, he would write me something from a new Yahoo address saying he had problems with his computer, and I would be like "But dude, I sent you the tracking numbers, but hold on, I'll do it again..." and then just report his new email address for fraud.

I did it 3 times before he finally caught on, you could almost imagine the exasperation from him by reading his emails, I wish I saved them, too bad.

[hobbit709]

2. I have fun with the phishers

I usually use a name from the bush administration, make up numbers, phone number is usually the FBI's fraud hotline, etc. Swamp their computers with fake data and make them sort it out.

[corpseratemedia]

3. great idea! n/t

[annabanana]

4. Cyber Warriors! I love it!. . .n/t

[YOY]

5. The ebola monkey man.

Google him.

[Are_grits_groceries]

7. I don't agree with that at all.

However, there are ways to waste a lot of their time.

[YOY]

9. He's not for everyone.

Sometimes I think he's a total jackass...but honestly...he doing it to thieves.

[HamdenRice]

6. Some of them go way overboard and are no better than the scammers

There was a report on This American Life about this. It started out funny, but as the story went on, it became clearer and clearer that the baiters were even worse sociopaths than the scammers. Basically, they persuaded some guy in Nigeria to trek all the way to Darfur, where he broke his leg and was stranded in the middle of the civil war. These American doofuses seem not to realize how deadly a situation they put the scammer in, who was actually an employee of a racketeer.

It was perhaps the creepiest story I ever heard on TAL.

There are funny ones, though, like the British guys who persuaded a scammer to carve a wooden computer keyboard and send it to them, and then photoshopped the keyboard and convinced the scammer that it had shrunk in the mail somehow.



http://www.419eater.com/html/john_boko.htm

[pipi_k]

8. Didn't bait one so much as have a bit of fun...

A few years ago I got some really sad sob story from a Nigerian scammer who was trying to get money off of me.

I wrote back to him with a sob story of my own...full of personal and family tragedy...and asked him would he PLEASE PLEASE send me some money right away.

I even promised to pay him back someday.

The selfish bastard didn't even reply.



:cry:

[pipi_k]

10. bwahahahahahah

I spent a bit of time at the 419Eaters forum

some of the posters have used the threats and insults leveled against them in their signatures


Holy cow, some of them are a hoot

:7

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. I fowarded one scammer's e-mail to another

:-)