A question for long-time baiters

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Not quite a Newb Joined: 22 Jun 2010 Posts: 42

Do you find scammers harder to bait nowadays than, say, two or three years ago? Have they got more cautious as the baiter population increased?

Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2010 5:45 pm

Not really. For every baiter, there must be 100 scammers. The average scammer has crossed paths (I suspect) with one or two "jokers" but not enough to learn all of our tricks. Plus, we come up with new tricks!

Bruin

Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 3:14 am

I find it the same every year, iridium!

Good luck with your lads. Wink

Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 7:43 am

Iridium, you have to figure that a new crop of youngsters at entry level
is coming on board every year in countries all over the globe.

It seems the lads are still 99.9999% oblivious to us. Because we hide
in plain sight? Just guessing here. Site rules here say we don't burn them at the end of a bait, so they're still left wondering whether or not they were dealing with a baiter or a real victim for the duration of a bait.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 22 Jun 2010 Posts: 42

I was just thinking that some of them figure out they've been baited, and inform the newcomers of this risk.

BTW, where do beginners get their scripts from?

Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 11:15 am

To be honest I think it is such a dog eat dog world in lad land that each lad is looking to screw money out of beginner lads rather than offer them 'fatherly advice'. Even if they are part of a gang - don't forget that each will have specialised roles depending on language skills and experience within the food chain - they are still in competition with each other. Yes, they might partner up with other lads. We have seen baiters posing as guymen get these offers. But they are still looking to screw as much money for themselves as possible.

As for where they get the scripts from. They either steal it from others - maybe they have received the script in their inbox or bought it for a few naira. Some of the older scripts might be passed around between 'friends'.

Another thing not to forget is that they do not have anything near the organisation or co operation that we have. They cannot trust people that they do not know or maybe have not grown up with. You see posts here asking for help, maybe someone needs a baiter to pose as a victim, as a lawyer or so on. I can guarentee that I will not have met the baiter that I co operate with. I might not have exchanged pms with him. We can largely trust each other. The lads can never fully trust each other.

Edit to explain. We have had one or two baiters go overly lad friendly and when found out get dumped from here. But the point remains the same.

Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 4:45 pm

There are a few old adages (proverbs) that seem to sum up lads.

There is no honor among thieves.
There's a sucker born every minute.
What goes around comes around.
Appearances can be deceiving.
The best laid plans of mice and men (often go astray)
Beggars can't be choosers.

and some that don't

Charity begins at home.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Don't bite off more than you can chew.
Don't judge a book by its cover.
Every man pays his price.

Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 5:17 pm

Quote:

I was just thinking that some of them figure out they've been baited,

That is more than likely that they do figure it out, but them being able to prove it now that is another matter .... Laughing

Even if they do there is not much that they can do about it !

Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 6:16 pm

I'd be surprised if lads aren't aware of jokers by this stage of the game. Though it's beyond their comprehension that it is being done in an orchestrated way. And that fact we just do it for laughs would hardly ever be accepted. In that part of the world nothing happens for nothing. If a lad finally twigs that they are being lead up the garden path they convince themselves that you are the one trying to scam them because that's how things work in their world.

They like us, learn by experience and modify their behaviour to get the desired results. For instance, you hardly ever get lads using words like modality, or demurrage in their emails these days. That's obviously because they have been asked to explain what these uncommon (to us) words mean so many times by potential vics, the creators of scam formats have stopped using them to save guys wasting time explaining.

A lot of lads operate out of universities and colleges (419 is seen as a way of paying your way through school) and they do talk and swap ideas. Students also write a lot of the scripts and make documents for sale as a nice little sideline. Lads operate all over the world these days so must know that a lot of westerners have the time and resources to play around with them. This no doubt gets reported back to those working jobs in the old country, but for the reasons stated above is not widely believed.

In all the time I've been baiting, the only change I've noticed is they have condensed the time they want things to move on to the payment stage, from around two weeks to under a week if possible. The one constant seems to be that they want a return on their investment of time and money. So if you can keep them on the hook long enough, they will persist, even after they know you are a joker. That's pretty much the same psychology that keeps vics paying long after they know it's all a scam. They can't accept they have been had, so carry on in the hope they will get rewarded at some stage.

P.S. I would like to see a baiter campaign to reintroduce the use of modality and demurrage if only so they have to explain the meanings over and over. Wink

Not quite a Newb Joined: 22 Jun 2010 Posts: 42

Do you think someday they will come up with an unbaitable scam, at least for the average baiter?

Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 6:36 pm

^ No.

Master Baiter Joined: 04 May 2007 Posts: 187

^
Oh yeah? I bet I can come up with an unbaitable scam:

unbaitable scammer wrote:

Some semi-plausible story goes here. Please send me money via Western Money.

Then the scammer ignores any response that isn’t an MTCN, and checks each one online before attempting to cash it.

He won’t make much money though, so there’s not much point to baiting him anyway. And there’s no way they will actually try this, so windypops is still correct. But the challenge of an unbaitable modality needed to be met. Wink

419Eater is my life Joined: 10 Jul 2008 Posts: 366

Lad discipline can produce some close to un-baitable scams. A couple months ago a friend had an email account compromised and the scammer sent out a, "I have been robbed in London send me money" email. The scammer in this case had a two response script. The lad was essentially unbaitable.

p.

Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 12:27 pm

Another category of (nearly) unbaitable lads is those who don't use widespread email recruitment of their potential victims, but rely on some other form of contact where it's not so easy to get hold of them as a baiter, PLUS they are running scams where payment is meant to happen more or less instantly (as in the examples above).

One (still) highly prevalent scheme is the abuse of telephone relay services for the deaf: scammer pretends to be deaf, and contacts a business of some kind using the relay service (ie, typing in their messages, the relay operator reads the message out to the person who answers, and then types any spoken response so the deaf person can read what has been said). There have been some important moves in the relay business to deal with these types of scams, but it's still abused by scammers to some extent. Baiting them is virtually impossible because scammers are making the phone calls to known business locations. It's still a scattershot approach because they make many calls, but the nature of individual conversations makes it much tighter focussed than email scams typically sent to thousands.

The "typical" 419 scams are still comparable in their baitability, although a few specific baiting techniques seem to have become a bit less effective over time.

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 10:10 am

Firbuz wrote:

the scammer ignores any response that isn’t an MTCN, and checks each one online before attempting to cash it.

So I make a transfer of one dollar, tell him I've sent it, he checks and finds there really is a transfer waiting for pickup, then I withdraw it, so he doesn't even get that dollar.

Not that I'd ever risk a lad getting even a dollar, but then, a lad wouldn't risk ignoring everything that wasn't westie payment details. It's all good.

They aren't harder to bait these days. The ones who've been had before are easy to spot, and you just bait him straight, throwing in a few sillies later on when he's trained.

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 2:44 pm

This whole conversation highlights the value of the straight bait. Sure they make for boring reading, so they're not posted here, but when a lad loses a straight baiter, someone he thinks was a real victim and has no idea was a "joker", he's left scratching his head wondering what happened. Not every baiter is out there getting tatoos, safaris or funny pictures. Nor should they. Each type of bait has it's value and when deployed together it allows us to hinder and confuse them, making them less effective.

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 3:12 pm

Nap O lean is right:

I've been "Straight baiting" a guy who has been successful in the past. No idea why he chose me, but he kept on writing to me. Found out tonight that "his coming clean with me" may be part of the scam as it has worked with others. Grrrrrrr

Good thing I have no money, no intentions to travel, or in fact any sign of estrogen (maybe). I can't wait to see where it goes, it WON'T be going with me giving him money anytime soon. A hard time maybe, but NO cash Smile

Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2010 4:13 pm

Even if you're into collecting trophies, you'll need to spend some time bonding with your pet before making demands, and that means playing it straight. Lots of baiters lose lads because they go direct to the comedy. That's always been the case.

Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2010 9:35 am

windypops wrote:

In all the time I've been baiting, the only change I've noticed is they have condensed the time they want things to move on to the payment stage, from around two weeks to under a week if possible.

Yeah I've noticed that as well, the current couple of lads I'm baiting both passed me to the lawyer in their first reply, and the lawyers hit me for a fee on their first reply

Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2010 10:56 am

^ Which only adds to our enjoyment when it doesn't happen eh, JD? Laughing

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