Why we do what we do.....

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Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2014 4:13 pm

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/01/15/san-jose-woman-duped-out-of-500k-in-nigerian-online-dating-scam/

Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2014 4:39 pm

Lucky that she ever got a dime back. It really sucks that these scum have no consience. They'll leave their victims in prison or under a bridge and go party with their friends to celebrate the event.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 08 Jan 2014 Posts: 38

I followed the link and it was frankly inspirational - hard to believe that there are such naive little old ladies out there, but they seem to be plentiful. And it looks as though she thought she was doing something good, rather than being actuated by pure greed. A good reminder of the value of lad-distracting. The rotten bastards Evil or Very Mad

Baiting Guru Joined: 27 Mar 2011 Posts: 21158

This is the RAGE FUEL that drives me. I am afraid to post any of my profiles on that site for fear that I would catch many well meaning but naive people. Even Derrick is afraid and they don't make things big enough to scare him! (except my grand daughter, Nino when I put on his boots, my older brothers that mom locked in the closet when they were young and the velveeta shortage) That just ain't right!

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 1:36 am

I am sad/happy for the woman. Sad she was scammed, but happy she recovered part of her money.

Now, the comments section? I sort of want to send them to Scamwarners or here. They are really pissing me off.

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 3:16 am

Amazing that she's actually going to get part of her money back. All I can say if you just don't understand, not seeing it from this side, how easy it is to be fooled by these guys. If you're lonely, you read all the right words, hear all the right things and believe what this person is telling you, you suspend logic for that time frame. We all love a fairy tale and some of these guys will give you the greatest fairy tale of your life.

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 3:57 am

Quote:

The victim has only a “1 percent” chance of recovering the remaining $300,000 from overseas because “it’s just impossible to track down”

In other words nae chance !

Looking good in Gold SweetPoison....... Wink

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 10:16 am

Do not read the comments section - the occasional sensible poster is lost amid racist jibes and political hate-mongering.

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 3:04 pm

Call themselves Christians? Whatever happened to Christian compassion and understanding?

Most of the comments on that site are at best ignorant and mis-guided, and at worse downright racist. They ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 23 Nov 2013 Posts: 27

She's EXTREMELY lucky that she got some of her money back AND the scammer got arrested.

Unfortunately, baiting can be an uphill battle. I heard somewhere that there are 250,000 scammers out there and there's about 3000 people baiting worldwide. Every year, they rake billions of dollars and get away with it because of international loopholes.

I do this for the satisfaction of knowing their time is wasted on me instead of a real victim. While their time is wasted on me, I help take down their fake websites and share their messages here hoping another baiter will see it and hook them in again.

Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 2:21 pm

You heard somewhere that there are 250,000 scammers out there and there's about 3000 baiters worldwide; exactly this is the big problem as we are simply to less proper men to successfully battle the scammers down, or eradicate that crime. Well there are quite a number of websites who populate what we're doing but the bad on it is, that a lot of people feel called to do scam baiting and start to do silly stuff, after reading through some baits, popularized there; they understand baiting as a kina having a little fun with someone far away, without realizing, or simply out of carelessness, what they're creating for mess for us baiters. True it looks maybe easy if one reads a proper bait, as no one of us like to put explanations about the ups and downs, the way of working in detail into his documentation of his bait, as it would make the bait boring to read.

If one looks at a car's driver who is familiar with his car, if one watches him driving it looks quite easy what he is doing but if one never learned how to control a car and tries to do the same as the driver, one will most properly crash the vehicle.

The same happens if one just try to do a bait without a proper study time, under the lead of a mentor; the bait will go wrong. Unfortunately the scammers are well aware of that and grow more and more kinda paranoid, which make the lives of the professional baiters very hard. The problem is that the scammers getting educated by those wanabees, who believe they can do baiting without any knowledge and this way the scammers learn how to recognize a baiter from a victim and even a lot more.

Some of us try to get hands on a scammer, if he is in a country with laws and proper rules, as we try to get the police to arrest him but it is quite hard in some countries, to get their police to act and maybe try to arrest the scammer, because we also appear suspicious to them in most cases and we're being ignored. Also here we try our best to make the officials recognizing us as helpers, as allies in the battle against the scammers and not seeing us as another kind of scammer.

We need much more allies that's for sure but we don't need nerds who demolish us out of our own ranks and that's why I strongly recommend every one who likes to bait scammers: Please get a mentor and visit the Eater University before messing with a scammer.

Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 4:04 pm

@Herrmann I agree with what you are saying.The number of scammers is rising but the number of baiters is remaining the same.
I believe there are golden rules in baiting,never use real details about yourself and not getting an ITP involved etc.
I also believe there is enough information on this and other sites and on the net,that one could be self taught ( I have a mentor)
I believe that too much emphasis is placed on the comedy side of baiting and there no harm if you have weighed your pet up and feel you can push them a bit but its a small part of the whole.
There will always be folk who want to run before they can walk but that's life.

Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 5:53 pm

The important thing is that we are here, fighting the good fight against scammers. It may not be an elegant hobby at times, but we are effective. X number of scammers vs. X number of baiters, site killers, and warners = we're going to win most of the time. That works for me. Thumbs up

Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 3:50 am

You all are absolutely right but as Salting the Gold mine wrote our numbers remain approx. the same and the ranks of our opponents getting stronger and stronger. This is IMHO the effect of the bungle-baiting, done by wanabes as the scammers being literally educated, instead of being de-educated, by them.

As wanabes ignore already the basic rules of baiting and turn them upside down, in the believe anonymous behind their computers nobody can reach them, they use baiting to show off in some forums how cool and tough guys they are.

This bullshit gets supported by several forums; one certain German forum is even make it worse by inviting people, who have no clue about baiting at all, to do baits on scammers, supplying them even with mail addresses of scammers. Most are women who fell victim to a romance scammer and search information, or help; they get told, they can do revenge on their lads by biting them and give them a hard time.

Besides the mentioned forum has the headline "we just want fooling around with the scammers"

Quote:

In response to the 419-mails, Scambaiters have developed that make a joke of it, to turn the tables and now in turn piss the scammers.

Well ... IMHO scammers should be stopped efficiently, at last so badly damaged as somehow possible and not just pissed.

Wanabes complain about the lies of the scammer in their conversations, telling him even how to correct his mistakes, send them tons of usable materials, like real photos from other persons without making them most unusable for the scammers, they send perfect documents which are often times 1 to 1 copies of original documents and the scammers using this for their next victim with far more convincing effect and do even more damage.

Wanabes looking at our work as a joke and don't respect it - in fact they damaging our dignity, which makes also the contact to the officials continuously more and more difficult, as they have a hard time always to get us serious any way. I'm working in the Asian area and can tell you about, how hard it gets if I have to involve the cops (except Thailand, the cyberpolice there is working great), to seriously catch a scammer in the end and get him behind bars.

Real and proper baiting is an art, have to be done with honour and pride and one needs to have talents and sense of responsibilities as well as team spirit to perform it well; it needs absolute perfect performances and flexibility, as well as quite a lot of techniques - mentally and technically (how to do, gadgets and so on), to archive proper results, like the scammer bleeds a lot of his own money, wastes plenty of time (months if possible) but is permanently utterly convinced, his opposite is a real victim and he does the right thing, without realizing that he's uninterrupted on the lead of one or more baiters, etc.

I believe there are surely some people out there who have a kind of God given talent to be a baiter and they maybe do not need much education, as they get it intuitively but the most of the folks need to be educated first, like me some years ago:

Beforehand I have to admit that I never got a scam-mail or similar before and just got some vague info about a Nigeria connection in the press some times but never bothered about really.

In a PC-forum I found a post "you must see this guys - suuuper funny ..." plus a link to the eaters letter archive. Via that mentioned link I tumbled across a bait from our pioneer Shiver Metimbers and laughed my butt off but became fascinated the same time, read one more bait and another one; the urge to learn more about baiting brought me to the eaters forum, where I learned that the baiting is not a simple act of joking people and doing silly stuff, it's an art and and it is an honour to be a baiter; this was some thing what I really wanted to learn. After reading through all rules and ethics, as well quite a bunch of baits, here in the forum and else where, I signed up to 419eater, asked politely for a mentor and started to learn from him every single thing, to grow up to the baiter I am today.

Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 3:53 am

^Hear, hear!

Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 4:44 am

Great posts Herrmann! What some "wannabes" don't realize is that for every 1 comedy bait, there are most likely 100s of stale boring baits.

I know when I am baiting and see the scammers mistakes, it's so hard for me not to educate them. Instead, I come on here and comment on their stupid logic, vent and then get back to regular baiting, which is tireless. I do get satisfaction that while I may not be taking hours away at any given time, but if there are multiple baiter doing the same thing, to the same lad, it all adds up. That is time taken away from real victims.

I had the most satisfaction today than all my time baiting so far. (yeah, I know I haven't been here long) I killed a (my first) website that a scammer was using to get $812 per victim. Now the scammer has no valid website to point his victims to, therefore, future victims are going to be harder to get. Perhaps the victims who are in the middle of a bank transaction and take a look at the site, not see it and can now pull back their bank transaction and NOT lose their money. Not to mention money lost for the hosting itself.

I do agree there are those who are born to bait (next victim, The Monsignor, Ginger and GTmama to name very few) but if you want to bait, you do need to be safe, know the dangers, and know that it's not about getting a comedy thread. There are people out there who are losing every thing they own, some even their lives, all because someone can't get off his butt and do something productive with their lives and scam people instead.

Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:24 am

SomeBuddyAtHome wrote:

...What some "wannabes" don't realize is that for every 1 comedy bait, there are most likely 100s of stale boring baits.

That's right but what I want to point on, is that those wannabes (sorry I always write it wrong - I'm a German - ...wanabees, wanabes ... well ... Embarassed

... will do better next time) make our work continuously harder, as for example the scammers are hyper paranoid and quite hard to hook already; to convince them about our urge to help them (into hell) is near impossible and it takes enormous effort to get a scammer at the story line. This is triggered by ridiculous inability and bungle-baits of those want-to-be-baiter-fuzzies.

Quote:

I know when I am baiting and see the scammers mistakes, it's so hard for me not to educate them

Actually I use his mistakes and flaws to find out about the scammer, kinda profiling to get a better sight what kind of guy he is; so I find easily his weak points, which helps me to let him jump through loops.

Quote:

Instead, I come on here and comment on their stupid logic, vent and then get back to regular baiting, which is tireless.

Right I use to so as well some times. It's essential to have a little distance some when, to simply collect some more ideas how to go on, to relax the mind and not being permanently in action with a more or less stupid lad

Quote:

but if there are multiple baiter doing the same thing, to the same lad, it all adds up. That is time taken away from real victims.

Also very right; I personally try to get a scammer behind bars, if there is a chance. Especially safaris (congrats to yours Thumbs up

) are my favourites if a scammer is in Afrika and not in a country where I could get him burnt.

Quote:

... Now the scammer has no valid website to point his victims to, therefore, future victims are going to be harder to get. Perhaps the victims who are in the middle of a bank transaction and take a look at the site, not see it and can now pull back their bank transaction and NOT lose their money. Not to mention money lost for the hosting itself.

The killing of their websites, as you said, helps potential victims to get off and new ones can't get into a scam; well that's right but the scammers build up those pages quite fast on other servers, where they will be killed soon the same way. Nevertheless they bleed money for hosting costs and having big stress with the other scammers who perhaps use the sites as well and been cut off their victims the same way. They will kick his butt certainly as they assume he messed up something.

Actually all serious baiter should unite to a proper network world wide, IMHO 419eater as the forum and the Eater University as a kind of centre, only seriously convinced baiter who are well connected with the others. It maybe sounds like building up an army against scammers but why not? IMHO it would be most effective and the connection to the officials could be installed far easier as a well established association have mor impact then one baiter, a nobody for the cops, ask for help to arrest a scammer. We spoke about this a few years ago, here at the forum.

Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:03 am

I agree with you, about coming together and joining forces. This is the BEST forum to learn about baiting. Everyone here is nice, polite and willing to help anyone in needs. Ethics and morals of scambaiting, that is the way it should be.

I do want to clear up a few things, because I think the language barrier got in the way with my last post. SO

When I put quotes around "wannabes", it was NOT in anyway to point out a spelling mistake. I don't recall if there even was one! I don't call out another's spelling or grammar mistakes. Nor do I make fun of them, unless you're a lad. I make WAY too many of them myself for me to do that. Not to mention those type of people bug the crap out of me. Razz

The quotes were inserted more as a body language type of thing. It's so hard to express oneself on the internet. I apologize immensely for any offence you may have taken. Please, do forgive me!

I have not done a safari, yet! I don't know if I ever will. I imagine the safari you are referring to is the one in my sig line? That is The Monsignor's epic Hell Safari! TM is a genius and I enjoyed that bait so much, I want to make sure everyone has a chance to see it! None of the links are mine. The only things that are mine are the piggy (Oinker) and the flag. When I first came here, I found baits by clicking on other peoples links in their sig lines. I am just paying my respects to those who have done them. There is another in the works right now, but I don't want the search engines to find it as it's still an ongoing bait. If you want to read it, click here and get ready for an enjoyable time!

Again, I like your idea about uniting. I am very proud to belong to a forum of individuals who have built relationships with authorities and hosting providers. When reporting bank accounts and/or websites, those authorities listen and DO SOMETHING about it. That's awesome. Eater has only been around a little over a decade. We've come so far, yet still have so far to go. What you are speaking of, I wasn't here when it was discussed, but WE WILL get there! Perhaps it's time to revisit and open up a new discussion? You never know what can happen with one little idea.

Just think, if Shiver never responded to that first lad, would 419eater be here? Maybe, maybe not. It was his vision and he's the one who, along the way, recruited others to assist him with that vision. They're the ones who culminated the ethic and morals for our way of baiting. We all wouldn't be here, with Eater the way it is today, had Shiver never responded to a single lad. It's amazing what one person can do with a single vision. So, if you want to revisit that discussion, I am all ears!

It's been lovely chatting with you!

Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 12:05 pm

Quote:

TM is a genius

Boy are you ever mis-guided. LOL. j/k

Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 1:34 pm

Hehehe... SomeBuddy, you've got me a little wrong; I really misspell wannabe since ages, never really sure how to write it correctly. I'm embarrassed by myself about, that's why I apologized; I don't got your words as pointing out my mistake in any way - don't worry pal Smile

Concerning he safari I thought you where one member of and it's actually a real nice done one. I like safaris as there are a lot of cool possibilities to screw with the bloody lads and it's ongoing action.

To come back to the actual thread, about the lady who lost half a million to of such leeches; I like to tell you guys about another lady, I came across her misery just two hrs. ago. This woman is a Thai, telling her story, better said a few parts of it in FB; she's currently quite paranoid and scared to fall again for some scumbag, why she tells only a little.

She fell for a romance-scammer who "borrowed" money (3000 euros) from her and sent a cash-cheque (a lousy copy of a Maybank (Malaysia)-cheque) to her as a refund. Certainly the cheque was a fake and her bank had to disappoint her, the cheque is crap and her moneys are lost. My wife (she is also a Thai) has carefully established a contact to her but she is still too scared and thinks, we want to screw her as well so she's still reluctant to tell her story in full.

This is also quite a disturbing fact that victims mistaken us baiter as scammers, by the way. We are still on her - chat in FB and convincing her that we are the good ones here and can maybe help a little but she is also severely ashamed about what happened to her, not to mention the bomb crater in her heart, the damage of her soul. Usually this takes a bit time as Asian fellas are quite easy to scare away and they are very sensible humans.

After we come in proper touch with the lady and some informative talks and explanations concerning her case at my side, I like to point her to 419eater so she can learn about us baiter and that we're the good guys here. Her money is lost but she can at last learn to avoid similar mistakes in future and can tell her friends about how to travel save in the WWW without getting into the claws of some lad.

As we could read in the comments below the sad story of the lady who lost 500K, there are lots of ignorant and intolerant, blatant idiotic people out there and they kicking her as she's on the ground already, without getting an idea how she may feel now. IMHO surely 80% of these big mouthed fellas can fall for a scam as well, it's just a question of the kind of scam and they will fall for it the same way. Call it naivety, easy minded or even dumb and stupid but many, many well educated and best situated people fall for scams and they are not stupid at all. Don't forget the feelings, as lots of people fall victim throughout mercy, or sympathy; there is a poor child in a refugee camp, a lost son of a poisoned coco farmer-millionaire, and on and on and on .... all of them going for a victim with pathetic storys to get them to take pity on the "poor fella" who is in reality just a scumbag, stealing other peoples money.

Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 1:49 pm

Hermann, if I can provide any help to the victim, please let me know. I'm a former victim and now a romance baiter. I understand her fear and pain and why she would distrust others. Please PM me at any time.
I will tell you the crime is more of the heart and distrust, only made worse by the loss of money. I too deeply believed my scammer would bring the borrowed money back. And then you find out all of it was a lie, no lover coming to you, no money ever being returned. It is the cruelest trick of all.

Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2014 4:55 am

Thanx SweetPoison for your kind offer, it's certainly appreciated. Actually I just start up into active mode again, so to say, as I took a quite long off time; some big events - some good and some not so good - took me out of duty and I just kept the contacts with the authorities alive, for further actions, which hopefully may pay out now.

After long chatting I could gather a few solid infos: She is aged 30+, Thai, lived together with German husband in south Germany, 3 kids; they messed up some how and are in divorce period now and she's back in Thailand. Already in Germany she got contact to the lad via Facebook Rolling Eyes

the usual scam developed: lad pretends to be a Canadian (or New Sea-lander ... still not really cleared), an engineer, working with Petronas, a Malaysian Oil company. The lad seems to act more over phone - it's still not really clear, how their contact(s) were structured and I asked her to forward the usual stuff like written mails, documents and so on to me, to get a clear picture about the whole process. So far I can see, it's the usual romance scam, with an already quite devastated victim, which is still willing to send money ... OMG! Well... feelings, what else can one of us say, right?

Still she is (deeply?) in love with a photo (she believes it's him) and is so sad that the lad broke the contact to her - he's there but didn't answer her words (chat, phone and I don't know what else too). My wife called him via my lad-phone and we heard a young Malay; also his English was quite good. He asked always who is calling and my wife said she is a friend of the lady, why he broke off the contact. He dropped the phone but as mobiles in Malaysia have to send their number (it's a law here), the lad called back after 2 minutes a few times, using different numbers, wich I have listed already. Twisted Evil

The 3rd call I picked up an act as I don't know and probably wrong number. No prob to phone him for me, I use a voice morphing software and can talk to him as every thing, from child to women, to men and also several other, partly really weird voices; it's a really useful tool for phone- and Skype calls. If you like to experience it, I did a bait here.

Well ... he seems to be quite worthy for a go, especially as he is actually in Malaysia and uses a Malaysian SIM-card (Maxis). The Malaysian Cyberpolice should show interest at the case, as soon as I send them the first mails about the lad.

Hehehe... maybe I can make it up as a kind of cyber-cops-unity, as the victim is actual in Thailand and the Cybercops there are really on their toes. Would be really cool, right? Certainly I would sprinkle adverts for 419eater into the right spots, for further projects Wink

I'll have to report the incident, anyway to both, Malay and Thai officials, to get the most efficient chances for the lad's arrest. IMHO the Malaysians want a sober country (have in mind, Malaysia is also one of the listed "scam-countries"), as well as the Thais; so there should be a reaction coming from one or the other side. Anyhow, the perpetrator is acting from out Malaysia and may be a local, a Malaysian and so it's IMHO the concern of the RMCP (Royal Malaysian Cyber Police).

I assume I'll see what develops and keep you updated via PM if you like. Right now we are at the beginning of the story and have to sift every thing quite diligent; then build up a story to distract the lad from the lady, getting him into our "life" and gathering RDs from the lad, which must be done really careful, as you all know and this takes time; in case I can work this bait, I probably may call for allies here and open a thread in the protected area, to avoid leakage towards the lad.

Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2014 9:34 am

^^^^^
If you can get this lad arrested, it would truly be a public service. Will you let us know how it goes?

Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2014 9:15 am

Oh he wouldn't be the first one in my record; a few of his colleagues are already rotting behind bars. If he delivers me a chance to cling on, he won't get rid of me, as I can be like arse cancer Cool

Yes sure, if I can make a decent bait on this lad I'll publish the story anyway. Usually I publish baits after I finished them but to keep you guys updated I can open a thread and keep you informed about it's process.

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