Ever get an Innocent 3rd party?

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Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 5:49 pm

So I responded to this scam and went right into my format of not being interested in his deal, but needing wood carvers. He responded with saying he knew somebody and would have them contact me. I was contacted by the other email address. The guy sent me weird kind of pics of his work. He claimed they were his websites, but it was all really weird. All the carvings seemed really nice. I have since tried to go back and look at the sites again and they are all down. I have tried looking him up on Google and I find random posts of his and he is always pimping his carving business. Anyway, he did send me a carving and then a second when I said the first was damaged. Because of some confusion the second carving went to a closed drop box and got returned to him. He has refused to send it again. Anyway, through this all it has the appearance he is not a scammer at all, but just friends with a scammer. Do you think this is possible? I hope I didn't bait an innocent third party. He has sent me pictures of himself with other clients. I am making him send me a picture of himself holding a sign to validate the other pictures. He said he would, and I am just in the process of waiting.

My question, has something like this happened to others? I am guessing it has. Thoughts? Do non-scammers sometimes accidentally get baited?

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 6:42 pm

Doesn't your strategy involve them joining a new religion, etc, before they make the carvings?

I don't think a legitimate business owner would join a new religion just to make a sale.

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 6:52 pm

I have more than one route I take. When I get bored with one I go to the other. This one was for my art company T@B En+erpr1$e$. We ask for a sample carving based off of a pic I send them. The rest is just wasting there time getting stuff carved and shipped and then the product is always damaged, so start back at the beginning until the lad gets fed up. So, no religion in this one.

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 7:01 pm

I think the standard test is to send a 'hey, sounds sweet, how does it work?' or even 'did you get my payment? i want my trunk box.' from a different address.

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 7:04 pm

^ it is, but in this case he was passed to the carver by the lad. Not a lot different from being passed to the barrister.

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 8:18 pm

The difference here is that the barrister is the lad's idea, and therefor part of the scam, probably even the script, and the carver is the baiters idea, and arguably not part of any scam. So the barrister doesn't need to be tested, but the carver might.

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 8:30 pm

^^I agree. If you cannot confirm that the person you are baiting is a scammer, you should drop them and move on. With so many confirmed scammers out there waiting to be baited, there is no need to risk baiting an innocent person.

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 8:32 pm

I think my question got lost. Have any of you ever ended up baiting an innocent party?

On a side note, tests have been put in place to decipher whether or not the carver is a scammer or not.

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 8:36 pm

I would suggest doing Bolleboos' test.

In the future, instead of getting contact information for a carver from the lad, you could say that you trust the lad but nobody else, or that you want to keep your business dealings as simple as possible. Would the lad please be your middleman--you will pay the lad directly for the carvings that are shipped, and he is free to take whatever he wants as profit and pass on the rest to the carver(s) he employs.

This means that if the lad contacts a genuine carver, he will probably have to pay the carver to get the "sample", which he may gladly do if he envisions huge profits in the future. Or the lad will scam the carver with an IOU or whatever. Either way, it's the lad that gets burned in the end, and if the lad gets in hot water with a local guy with lots of carving implements, so much the better.

Jammy

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 8:47 pm

^Have been through the above scenarios many times. Sometimes it doesn't work out that way.

Still, not looking for ways to figure things out with this lad, or how to improve the bait. Just wondering if others have ever baited an innocent party.

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 9:20 pm

If baiters take reasonable precautions, I would hope it's a very rare occurrence.

That said, I have baited lots of scammers who claim they are innocent. Wink

Trophy Videos · Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 9:52 pm

I've had one wacko Reverend, a couple of beggars, and one guy who was just looking for a green card. Once I found out what they really were, I dropped them. Just follow luckey's advice.

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 10:42 pm

A couple of non-scammer-ish bates I have started:

Baiting a spammer. Sometimes an aggressive website will automatically enroll me in their newsletter/promotional email list when I leave my comment and email on their guest book. I ALWAYS make sure to check "Do not contact me" etc, so any time this happens I know that the website has done this against my explicitly stated wish. In that case, I've been known to start baiting the spammer until they stop sending me spam.

Baiting Indian lads. I've only gotten a few 419-ish emails from India, but these end up feeling very different. Usually they just ask for money, and there is no hint of trickery, con, lying, or any of the usual 419 stuff. It's just someone with very very bad English asking me to send money and not promising anything in return. I find this type of baiting very boring, and kind of pointless, so I don't usually do it.

Neither of these are exactly "innocent third parties", but they are not exactly scammers either.

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 11:14 pm

I've dropped a couple baits because I wasn't sure.

For one of them I even sent out an ASEM saying I didn't know where to send the fees to collect my lotto winnings. He responded back with WU details, but still he could have been an opportunist rather than 100% lad so I dropped him anyway.

The other lad I dropped, I dropped because I think he may have stopped scamming. After many months of baiting he gave me this big confession where he told me he had been arrested for scamming and he asked for my forgiveness. He still calls me to this day (did again yesterday in fact!), but never asks for money. I think now he just wants to marry me to get out of his situation there in Nigeria.

Do I really believe either one of them are not scammers? No, not entirely. However, if I'm not sure so I'd rather point my efforts at the obvious scammers and we all know there's plenty of them!

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 11:40 pm

As reply to the OP's question about ITP's, when I was chasing lovelads my persona usually got involved with several ordinary people, a few of whom were being scammed by the lads I was after.

Most of them I managed to wake up and get the involvement stopped, one is still ongoing, after 3 years, and is still sending money and involved with fwding items to his Princess in ladland.

You will get ITP's, trying to decide the level of involvement can be tricky, as in the carving example you mention. It is quite reasonable to accept he is an ITP and thinks he is dealing with a normal carving import business, sending an asem to him might get a response back, but in all honesty, if you were struggling to make ends meet as a carver, and someone sent the chance to get some money?

I'd drop him if there is any doubt in your mind.

Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 12:15 am

I was baiting a love scammer that I called hook to the left. He sent quite a few photos of his crooked appendage to fellow baiters. I just baited away, wasting his time and slamming his box with cheesecake photos. After many months I notice that there's a thread on him and its generally agreed he is only a spammer and a loser not an AFF con artist. He was originally from Turkey and now living with someone he met online in West Virginia. I felt pretty badly. When he said he wanted to work at a National Park, I sent him some links for seasonal employment. I was actually very relieved when he told me about his uncle's map to some gold fields in Turkey that could be utilized if I gave him $10,000 for a metal detector.

Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 7:10 pm

So the update on this is I have dropped the possible lad. He appears to have some credibility. Something still bugs me about him, not quite sure if he is totally innocent but I am letting him go. Definitely going to take a few different precautions to make sure lads do not have a loophole again to give me possible doubt.