How did you get into scambaiting?

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Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2019 8:32 pm

For me, it was randomly surfing the internet one night and stumbling across a site with a blatantly racist name where the guy publishes his baits. I won't link to it because most of you probably have an idea anyway and it doesn't belong here. When I got through laughing hysterically at his antics I started looking for more and found this great community that makes a point to avoid ITPs, any hint of racism, and teach safe baiting.

Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2019 8:36 pm

It was the Turd bait for me; I signed up originally to read all of it, but I didn’t start baiting in earnest (besides an occasional “let’s send out a few emails and hunt piggies”) until the summer of 2017 when Lake Amour and Jayhawk let me tag along with the Humphere bait.

Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2019 8:45 pm

I was targeted by a romance scammer on facebook. Played a little with him (I know, not safe, I realized that afterwards, but my facebook is pretty well closed off, so he couldn't really know anything about my RL). I had some fun, found this site and decided to play some more, because it's fun to give those assholes some of the feelings they give to their victims.

Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2019 9:28 pm

I listened to the episode of This American Life about scambaiting. Fell in love with the concept immediately. My parents weren't comfortable with the idea at the time, but now that I'm an adult I can do whatever I want! Razz

(within reason, of course!) Laughing

Not quite a Newb Joined: 17 Jun 2017 Posts: 55

Found James Vietch's TED Talk on YouTube, and then watched all his scambaiting sketches. Never had any concept of scambaiting before that point.

Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2019 11:12 pm

Linoline I am glad you realized it wasn't safe and found better ways to bait. A lot of folks make that rookie mistake - once you realize it just drop them and move on and it should be ok in most cases.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 24 Aug 2019 Posts: 3

Nathan wrote:

Found James Vietch's TED Talk on YouTube, and then watched all his scambaiting sketches. Never had any concept of scambaiting before that point.

Thats exactly how I discovered scambaiting. Veitch's baits were hilarious

Posted: Sun Aug 25, 2019 6:12 pm

James Veitch has excellent delivery, although his baits pale in comparison to what people do here. It would be interesting to try and get in contact with him to see if anything could happen that way, although I imagine he is too busy to consort with the likes of us. One could send his agent an email if we wanted to, although I don't see much point. He did publish a book of his unedited transcripts from scambaiting, but given his Youtube videos I imagine it's all somewhat tame.

Eater could use a new advertising campaign of some sort...

Posted: Sun Aug 25, 2019 11:47 pm

I began to bait in a totally amateur way back in 2005, not really sure what I'd achieve, but I did bait safe in a way - my email didn't identify me and I used an alias.

Then a friend told me about Scamorama, and I used some of the baits there for inspiration; after a time I followed a link there to Eater, and the rest is history.

Baiting Guru Joined: 17 Sep 2006 Posts: 5905

A. Skinner & Shiver sending a scammer to Glasgow!

https://www.419eater.com/html/mohamed_lucien.htm

The phone calls when they realise they've been swerved are priceless! Laughing

Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2019 3:41 pm

I knew about 419 scams before the internet existed. We used to get letters to the business I worked at as far back as the early 80s. The owner very nearly took the bait, but I (being a natural skeptic and all round humbug) cautioned against it. It all sounded too good to be true. Later, a trade magazine he subscribed to did an article on the subject as lots of other people in the same line of work had been targeted.

In the early days of the internet I wasn't as careful about posting my email on message boards or guestbooks as I am now. Scammers used web crawlers to find emails so it was only a matter of time before I started to receive scam mail. Did some research and discovered scambaiting was a thing.

Found Eater via: Scamorama (Lads from Lagos) and Ebola Monkey Man. Shiver, was baiting Joe Eboh <a href ="https://419eater.com/html/joe_eboh.htm">Church of the painted Breast</a> around this time. After reading that I was hooked. I spent quite a while reading various baits and finally joined 419 Eater.

Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2019 6:06 pm

My experience is virtually identical to windypops'. I received snail-mail letters in the business I ran in the early 80s too. Once I got online years later those infrequent letters became a flood of emails. At some point I read an article about them, and for the first time I realized there was actually a name for these -- 419 -- and I also discovered there was a lot more variety among them than I thought.

I started searching and found my way to scamorama.com in 2003. I spent a couple of weeks reading posts and laughing my head off. (Those were the days when comedy baits were the gold standard -- it was much later that I started appreciating straight baiting.) I decided "I can do that!" so I jumped in with my first bait. My main goal then was to do a bait worth publishing, and I did. In retrospect, that wasn't a bad first bait but I would definitely do a lot better now. I was in a big rush to wrap it up and post it, so I deliberately ended it way too soon. I also burned the lad, which is something I quickly learned never to do.

I did a bit better in my next Scamorama bait. I still burned him, but at least I stayed in character.

From there I found my way to Eater and I realized I had found my home. That was in April 2004, and I'm still here.

Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2019 10:35 pm

I got my own PC shortly before I retired from LE 11 years ago. Of course I was aware of letter and online scams due to my job but once retired I found a UK based baiting site (forget the name) where this baiter had invented a UK village of characters who conversed with lads. A lot of stuff was done by Fax in those days and the published baits were hilarious. I think he got bored and the site finished but up popped 419eater and unlike the 'burn the scammers' sites it had rules and tips how to progress baits to safaris, bank accounts etc. I joined here and it's been 'Hotel California' ever since Confused

Baiting Guru Joined: 25 Jul 2017 Posts: 2107

On a throwaway email account I rec'd many scam letters and one day decided to reply and play along. It ran for a few weeks, and over 100 lad emails. This led to me researching these scams, and I found Eater along the way. What a surprise to find people doing this in an organised manner. What surprised me was that while I was content to waste my lad's time, here I found there was an actual end game to baiting. People wanted to find mules. Report pigs. Shut down lad networks. It was eye opening into a more complex and dark world I probably knew was there, but gave little thought to.

Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2019 2:04 am

Windypops you are braver than me to mention that site here. That was where I discovered baiting. Glad to say I found a more productive community to go about it the right way. Smile

Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2019 9:06 am

^ Nooooooooo! That was the other lot. Who shall not be named. Now thankfully gone.

Scamorama and Ebola are perfectly legit.

Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2019 9:16 am

Juan Freizwidatt wrote:

I received snail-mail letters in the business I ran in the early 80s too.

They must have had access to copious supplies of Yellow Pages back then. And had an uncanny knack of knowing the ups and downs of various trades or businesses. And would target them relentlessly.

That was back in the good old days when you could give them a working fax number. So nascent baiters would direct them to downloading ginormous files where possible.

Eeeeee Lad!

Posted: Mon Sep 02, 2019 10:07 pm

I, too, encountered scam snail mail in the late 1980s. My brother in law got one at his business address. The envelope had a hand-written address and was directed to "CEO, [name of BIL's business]." Inside was a mimeographed letter (has anyone seen anything mimeographed lately?) with a corrupt Oil Ministry official format. It was not very convincing.

I first heard of scambaiting in the early 2000s when an article in The Guardian called it "the internet's newest blood sport." I was in.

Elite Baiter Joined: 28 Mar 2015 Posts: 1916

I was scammed, which I don't like to think about too much. However, I must have spoken to someone about this very needy lad in Ghana who was begging the wheels off my personal financial carriage for the sake of his five-year-old son when I was directed to search online for stories of romance scams. I found Scam Warners and went on to find Eater from there.

I seldom bait, though have taken on one or two romance lads. However, I suspect I still have some residual stuff going on from when I gave away all that cash, even though it was five years ago, so I prefer to support other baiters.

Posted: Tue Sep 03, 2019 10:04 am

3-4 years ago, my sister was received many emails from a romantic scammer. He sent flowers and candy to her and promised his eternal love. Laughing

I found this whole story very suspicious, so I started searching the Internet for similar stories... I found the Eater forum and that's where it all started.

I have no any regrets, because I managed to know some good people and I haved big fun here. clapping

Posted: Tue Sep 03, 2019 3:50 pm

lakeside77 wrote:

(has anyone seen anything mimeographed lately?)

Not since I left college in 1978. But the smell lingers. And I inhaled. Razz

Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2019 2:13 am

^^Hey!! You left college the same year I finished undergrad. It took almost three years to get the purple out from underneath my fingernails.

Posted: Fri Sep 06, 2019 11:26 am

^I had grease under mine. HND in mechanical and electrical engineering. Back in the day when it was possible to fix just about anything with Murphy's screwdriver (that's a %@!king big hammer to you Razz

) and WD 40.

Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2019 7:13 pm

I had bookmarked a somewhat famous 419 site maybe 15 years ago, laughed and promptly forgot about it.

Then, a few years ago, an elderly family friend got caught up in a romance scam. In searching the internet to "prove" he was in a scam, I found this site. Read through a few baits and thought I might have the sense of humor to do this, so it began.

Last I heard, the elderly family friend is still in the scam and out at least $15k. I tried and he cut off all contact. Haven't seen or spoken to him in about 18 months, unfortunately.

Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2019 6:27 pm

I read some of the early baits and it got me interested!

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