Unsuccessful baiting - for transparency's sake

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Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 7:40 pm

So I've been thinking about this for a few days. A wonderful fellow baiter mentioned in passing that all of my baits are so successful, and I hastily replied that I typically only post the successful baits.

I've had quite a few crash & burn for various reasons which I'm still trying to figure out. I mean, beyond the obvious, that it's always the lad's fault Laughing

I keep a folder with txt files and images on each bait attempt. In my "successful bait" folder, I have 5 love scammers I've engaged with in the past 6 months. Successful means I have kept them on the hook at least a month, wasting their time, whether I got a piggy or other trophy.

My unsuccessful baits folder has about 15 or 16 attempts in it. My success rate is roughly 25%, which hopefully is higher than the scammers' success rates. I want to improve this rate.

So many reasons for "failure"... mostly, I believe, because something I said indicated I was not an easy target. I do think I'm getting better. I know sometimes it may be the scammer who has an issue (football to watch, found a more compliant victim, passed me along to an incompetent fellow lad, whatever) but I'm curious to hear from others about your bait failures. Can you recount a glorious crash and burn from your past for those of us who are relatively (or very) new? What did you learn from your mistake, and how did it change the way you baited?

And just a fun side note: this exchange from last week is the shortest bait attempt I've ever experienced, and I am assuming it has gone poof:

To Ken:
are you the handsome guy on match? Smile

Quote:

From Ken:
Just a regular guy.

to Ken:
My bad.

Aaaaand... poof.

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 10:15 pm

I was looking forward to some erudite comments on this post but alas there has been none,I am far too dim to indulge myself but I was sure others would.

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 10:19 pm

I think you hit the Nail (Lad rather) on the Head by realizing you might not be such an easy target. As one who loves to Bully Lads I find you have to get them into a position where the Money is just out of their grasp before taking that approach.

As far as memorable Baits that crashed and burned I have many; as when I started Baiting I had no idea what I was doing so I tried the same Lad from many different Addys to see what would work. Obviously this isn’t a foolproof method as all Lads are different but it did give me a great deal of insight into Lad Mentality. For example I once took a HitLad for several days (I know not long) from a variety of characters and the one he really shied away from was from a Korean War Vet. He was perfectly willing to take money from a Stoner Teenager who was stealing from his sister’s purse or a scared Housewife but when presented with a Gruff old Sergeant he cowered away.

These days unless I am involved in a Co-Bait I keep my characters kinda simple and compliant until it is time to make them otherwise.

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 10:39 pm

There you go,that was'tn so hard.
And a jolly good comment,I might add.

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 12:51 am

@OP, thank you - that was insightful! I wouldn't have thought of trying multiple characters on the same lad as a "taste test". Hmmmm....! I've only got one character "live", and one in progress, but I'm going to keep this in mind!

@STGM thanks for the thread bumps. I do recognize I'm posting this thread on a weekend, and for the American contingent, many may be on a binge celebrating (as B8er so wonderfully told a lad) our "Queen's birthday" and therefore offline. I'm still hoping others will come forward with confessions and/or tips!

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 1:49 am

The baits I post nowadays are my more playful ones. Some will last a few months. Some will die unexpectedly given the fact that I'm constantly pushing to see what I can get away with. The baits I don't post are pretty boring and straight forward. I have a better success rate with those but tend to get bored easily with them.

Given what I've learned between the two styles I'd have to agree with OP. Being believable as a victim, being nice and acting like a real person goes a long way. There is a balance to the two I think depending on the character. I always try to first think of how a real victim would respond to something and then add in that characters odd personality quirk or trait. Or crazy.

A successful lad isn't really expecting a vic to want to remove a profile, meet, fall in love or get married after two or five or ten emails. Most real people would be cautious. I like to caution my 'female' lads on the dangers of traveling to other countries to meet men they don't know when they ask to meet. Because I care so much. Wink

Or, because I think a decent guy who cares about a girl he thinks is real would actually(I hope) do that. So I'd imagine the lad would expect a real person to. If I did the opposite and played along with the lad, I think instead of him seeing me as willing, he will see me as a joker.

So a lot of it is being a good victim as well as timing. Not being too over the top too soon. Not to mention being able to manipulate the lad into thinking he is in control even when he's not.

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 2:24 am

I had a bait in May that went poof. A product lad ordered some part from my list, I told him the price, he realized he made a gross error of scale and upped it by a factor of a thousand, I recomputed it, he told me who the sheeper is, I asked the sheeper, got an answer, added it up, and sent it to the lad. Then for a few days he gave me black pigs. Having paid in full, he asked me to contact the sheeper to arrange a pickup. I confirmed my address. Next thing the lad sent was a link to ns1.scamwarners.com (which is the same as Eater), where the address appeared in a previous bait. The whole bait took just under a week.

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 8:33 am

Well there. I have been saying for just how long time now that I should start posting my unsuccessful baits just to get rid of the misconception that around here every communication with any lad is artwork delivered to your front door after the third email. And now it's my former mentee of all people who beats me to it. Where is the justice in this world?

So what can I say, other than great idea for a thread, Kitty. Off the top of my head I have one case to share from the Spring. I was speed baiting lads for phone chopping practice for another mentee and picked up a loan lad among others. He asked for my ID scan. I gave him an explanation for why not and offered an alternative. He replied "you are not ready for your loan" and I replied "you are not the only loan lender in the world".

Poof, obviously. But it was a poof that put a smile on my face: someone somewhere, perhaps even I myself in the past, has made this lad so paranoid that he is going to be losing real victims along the way too if he continues like this.

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 11:27 am

Sometimes I will intentionally bait "unsuccessfully" - especially on a mass bait where it's handy to have at least a few respondents who don't demand anything unusual of the lad -- just go along with the early stages and then say "screw you, it's a scam" when payment is requested. this way (I hope) some credibility is given to the respondent pool, perhaps think of this as "running interference" for other baiters to try & disguise the idea that a bunch of time wasters have descended on the lad all at once.

Nearly all of my unintentionally failed baits, the lad just quits responding to me. Usually this is when I claim to be unable to speak English and thus unable to use the phone (only write using online translation) - and some lads will just cut it off then with no further explanation.

Other points of failure for me.
- any time I introduce a chop (or appearance of a chop, like "I sent the payment using the details your secretary provided") there is a very good chance the lad will not buy it and will proceed as if they never received that message. If this happens to me the bait is likely to be finished.... although we can squabble a bit more about payment modalities, his confidence in me as a victim has taken a big hit.

- I get dropped a lot very early on: my character's writing is rather hard to read and I'm sure many lads think it's just not worth the trouble.

oh yeah, and one recent inheritance scam: I replied something like "I am from china, could this be correct?" and the scammer answered something in the vein of "Sorry, I sent it to you by mistake". Usually I would expect either an affirmative or silence.

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 4:38 pm

I have a few long running bait threads in this forum as well. In the interest of full disclosure on how I get lads to stay on the hook and do extraordinary things for me, I post even the minutiae, such as my ideas for the future of the bait, or the emails that don't do anything but build up the lad's confidence in my characters. This way, people can see the level of planning and the amount of time that goes into a long term bait.

I am primarily a site killer, so I really only bait lads that come to me, or lads I am given by other baiters as part of a mass bait, because I wouldn't have time to go looking for them otherwise. Most of these baits last under a month, and I don't post about them unless it is a mass bait thread or something interesting happens.

It usually ends the same way: the lad realizes I am not going to pay, and he stops replying or accuses me of being a joker. I poke him for a bit longer because I believe in never letting the lad have the last word, but that's as far as it goes for maybe 75% of my baits. Lads like Ozzy and John Well who stick around for several months are the exception.

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 5:04 pm

You do a bloomin marvellous job, Big X.Very unobtrusive,low key,and behind the scenes.Bit like the dude in your avatar.

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 5:57 pm

I might be baiting anywhere from 2 to 30 lads at a time. If I were to post about all of them, I would never get any baiting done. Are all of mine successful? Of course not. Like others, mine usually fail when the lad realizes there will be no money.

If I have a lad on the hook for a week, I will usually contact them from a second, unrelated character. This gives me options between the two characters. One of the characters will usually ask along the way, "Hey! This is a scam. I want to get in, too. How can I help?"

As for my most memorable "drop?" I was baiting a loan lad that had replied to an ASEM. We were going right along and I had collected 2 or 3 piggies from him. Over the course of several days, other lads replied and I hit them with a copy and paste script. One of the additional lads was just a separate email addy for the original lad. He was not pleased with what I was doing.

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 6:47 pm

Nature of the Lads:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJZY__j0Tyk

THHHTP. you were gone...

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 6:50 pm

I don't really keep track of my successes or failures. Usually I drop a lad out of boredom, though I have ben dropped by a few lads who figured out I was a joker Laughing

I straight bait and play a convincing victim. I don't do the crazy stuff.

I've had some good massbaits in the past, and I've got a few baits going on now where they've been on the hook for months. A few of those are co-baits with members here.

In fact, I've got a new lad right now, and I'm thinking of dropping him. He has a skype number. I have Skype as well, and I use it exclusively for calling lads. I don't want him to realize I'm on Skype. So I'll be dropping him. I don't know if that constitutes a failure or not.

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 9:03 pm

If you wasted a full second of his life, it's a success!

That's a second that he didn't spend scamming someone.

(Yup, another two cents)

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 9:11 pm

^^^ Well said!

And every failed bait may also lead to the lads being more paranoid about being baited, thus hopefully dropping real victims.

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 9:12 pm

^Just stopped by to post something similar Oh Mighty Ninja!

Jeeze can't think of anything else to say....

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 10:25 pm

oscarpiles wrote:

^Just stopped by to post something similar Oh Mighty Ninja!

Jeeze can't think of anything else to say....

Well for a start you could tell us what's going on in that avatar of yours,I can't make head nor tail of it Confused

TIA.

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 10:59 pm

^^^ Depends on which way he's pointing. He could be praying to Mecca, or Mooseheart, or Even the porcelain.

But for transparency, I normally send a tickle E-mail to ten Darlings. I get 5-8 replies. Around 5 stay with me long enough to get piggy's from them.

During the 500 in 6 the numbers were higher across the board but the success ratio was about the same.

Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 12:39 am

I thought my Avatar was somewhat self-explanatory. I do have another but it has Ass Crack so I refrained....

Back to the Thread; I was chatting with a Lad and things moved very quickly from a my name is... to 'am ready to spend both my day and night with that special man'

The Lad didn't like my response but gave me a keeper and did hang around:

Quote:

am not a type of laddies that show boobs just like that

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 13 Jan 2014 Posts: 698

My very first failed bait is published here under the title 'The Rev Dodges The Rock' http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=245459 It also happens to be my very first bait ever, which almost certainly explains why it failed so spectacularly - far too ambitious, no doubt. Then, on 28 May - nearly four months after sending me this:

Quote:

i don't need any money from you, God forbid
Goodbye and may God change you from evil

I received another message from him, telling me that he had been very disappointed in the way I had treated the poor little heiress in his refugee camp, but she had found her true love in the shape an English gentleman who had answered her pleas. She had regained her massive inheritance and had left $300,000 of it with him to pass on to me. I'd had enough of his low-life, sanctimonious rubbishy admonishments, so I blew him out with this:

Quote:

Greatings once again, Fred. I have received your earlier message and I have to be frank with you. Each time you write you leave me with more unanswered questions in my mind . Let me explain

Several weeks ago my organisation offered to assist you by donating $200,000, to help in the relief of those poor souls in the Dakar refugee camp, which at first made you very happy and we spent a lot of time, trouble and energy working out the best way to make this happen. Very suddenly, you turned against us and called us evil and you clearly wanted nothing to do with us. Right now, it is clear that you are still at the refugee camp, which can only mean that there are still several poor souls there in urgent need of help.

Now, suddenly, you have in your possession several hundred thousand dollars that you are very anxious to give to us, who you consider evil and who you know administer a huge fund which we distribute around the World to help support those in desperate need.

So my first question is why?

To which he replied:

Quote:

Sorry, i owe you no explanation, it is your ex-partner that left the draft cheque for you and not me

I don't expect to hear from him again ....

BTW, I haven't entirely abandoned the original idea of luring one of these creatures to the Gibraltar/Spanish border, which I believe could be a very risky place for them to visit, and where they could come under very unfriendly scrutiny from either the Spanish border guards the British border guards - or even both ...

Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 12:40 pm

From my point of view are no such things as unsuccessful baits. Yes, maybe not all the lads can be safaried, get tatooed or are able to provide something that can be considered as a trophy. Even in those cases, the lads are damaged (losing a lot of time, bank accounts or fake sites). And by the exposure of the basic info the lad is using online (on ScamWarners and similar sites), at least you know what you are doing may help/save someone, even if the bait itself was not funny enough to deserve a topic here.

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