Help needed for Documentary on Scambaiting

By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics and access other forums reserved for members. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today by clicking here.

Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 4:43 pm

Hey! i went on the guestbooks like you advised, quite a few actually still nothing!

Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 4:49 pm

Scrap that Master Ive finally got one!! Lets see where I can take this, your assistance may be required!

Here we go..!

Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 6:58 pm

You'll find plenty of help here SumGirl - and having the narrative element of your own baits will certainly help.

Have you considered signing up for a baiting mentor in the Hints & Tips forum?

Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 7:22 pm

Hi yes masterofpuppets Is helping me if he doesnt mind still? Very Happy

Got a couple at the moment

Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 7:41 pm

Master of Puppets / Pastor of Muppets is a great guide to have, you've got a good'un there Wink

Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 8:00 pm

Yep, I'll send him a PM.

So far I have a typical email from a Daniel : 'help me shift the money' 40% for me..60% for him..

And and apparently one from a reverend who says Im about to get $21 million.. lucky me!

Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 9:04 pm

I'd suggest getting a few on the hook (go to the surplus forum if you're short of applicants) as then you can pick out the more fun/interesting ones - most never get to the trophy/safari stage, so increase your odds Wink

Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 9:11 pm

@Sumgirl: Of course I'm still game!

@MBL: Pastor of Muppets was another baiter... That was never me, though some people will say we're all Rover actually.

Posted: Sat Oct 10, 2009 12:31 am

Damn it, I knew you'd blab about that sooner or later!

Posted: Sat Oct 10, 2009 1:30 pm

I claim no special expertise Sumgirl but the psychology of scamming interests me, and it's probably a good way to look at it for a general overview.

The clarion call you hear a lot from many people is 'I'd never fall for that'. That's far from true. A good baiter uses many techniques of the scammer though, of course, not with the intent of stealing money. It's ironic that the scammer often ends up being caught using similar techniques to those he uses.

I have heard of a college professor, a financial adviser and an ex-mayor of Northampton all being duped. I believe the ex-Mayor had to be rescued from Africa and the financial adviser and college professor both went to jail. It's not all little old ladies and the slow witted who fall for scams. Sometimes being smart can make you more vulnerable.

I'm not a specialist on the romance scams, but it's interesting to note that the scammers even appear to have profiled male and female victims, as the characters they offer both are different.

If you know what your victim (or scammer) is looking for or needs, then you have a head start. Bite - hook, then make it solid - after that anything's possible.

I'm a scammer (a pretend one) - though sometimes I'm a female Russian model. Very Happy

I'm a crap impersonator, but I use their minds, not my skills. If they want it enough, they'll believe me. I bring them the possibility of their dream - and that's what it's all about.

Posted: Sat Oct 10, 2009 5:15 pm

Yes , Im glad you said that, I have had so many responses when telling people what Im fdoing 'how could people be duped so easily' but I agree , the more I am finding out there are some crafty ones out there. I want to exlore this, we are actually tying to find a psychologist to speak about what might through a victims head when about to enter into a scam. Unfortunatly not one person from our University is willing to talk which makes me so angry! (its the least they could do the amount we pay to study there!! Evil or Very Mad

But it would give an interesting perspective, Id love to hear what they have to say

Posted: Sun Oct 11, 2009 2:38 pm

Try reading this

http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/reports/consumer_protection/oft1070.pdf

I didn't know it existed when I made the comment, but it looks like quite an in depth study.

I'll read it myself later and see how it fits in with what we do.

Being able to refer to an official government study and report in your own project would assist in the credibility stakes. It doesn't invalidate your own work as you're in a community that deals solely in scammers and their victims, on many different levels.

It may actually enable you to critique their findings by practical experiment and observation.

Though they refer to the totality of scams, not just 419, it is worrying to note that annually they estimate that 1 in 15 of the UK population, being 3.2 million adults, fall for a scam at an annual cost of £3.5 billion.

That's a very detailed and analytical study, which I still haven't finished but it includes some very good insights.

One point mentioned is "A persistent error in human decision making is the tendency to seek information that confirms one's initial hypothesis, rather than information that might prove it wrong."

If you then have a scammer targeting people on a romance website, where they know what the victims are seeking, you see how even an unsophisticated scammer can be successful.

Posted: Sun Oct 11, 2009 3:57 pm

Wow, thank you Ill print it off and read it, sounds really useful! Im currently on the romance scams website reading and reading what I can.

Thank so much it certainly will add some credibility!

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 12:46 pm

GomerPyle wrote:

If you then have a scammer targeting people on a romance website, where they know what the victims are seeking, you see how even an unsophisticated scammer can be successful.

Absolutely!.... Many victims of Romance Scams wear "Love Goggles" which blinds them to things that other people would say "how can they fall for things like that !"

The other classic "I'd never fall for that" is the age old Lotto scam.

In the UK (only last year) one student fell for one, and committed suicide as a result.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/7380093.stm

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 4:43 pm

I don't know which professor you were referring to GomerPyle, but one of the most famous scam-victims was the head of Psychiatry at University of California. There was also a woman who was a retired Oxford lecturer, and another psychologist/brain researcher who was profiled in The New Yorker a few years ago. Then there was the man who was the subject of the recent film "The Informant," a high-level executive at Archer Daniels Midland, whose bizarre embezzlement scheme was hatched after he got involved with a 419 scammer. The common thread appears to be financial desperation.

Help needed for Documentary on Scambaiting	View next topic View previous topic