Everyday I report these scammers to kijiji and other classified sites hoping that the powers that be remove them.

One of the most common threads is these people claim to have to give up soemthing (a pet for instance).  They say they are giving it up for free as they are moving. (Always to nigeria or cameroon) on some sort of humanitarian mission.  They then only require you to pay shipping for the animal.  So you send them the shipping fees and make arrangements to pick up your precious cargo only to be disappointed as nothing arrives.

This is only one of many types of scams.  Here is only a partial list:

- Lottery scam, where they claim you won some large amount of money usually by some big name company however you never entered any lottery.  They now include in the letters that you didn’t need to enter the lottery.  You will eventually be asked to pay for some official document or something in order to obtain your money or you may be asked to produce your bank account information and will find your account drained.

- Dating scams, where they give a sob story of someone or themselves getting sick and needing money for surgery.  There are many versions of this scam and getting sick is only one of them.  These scammers typically prey on women wanting love.

- Charity scams, where they are usually a sick christian with a large wad of cash wanting you to disperse the funds to charities.  Of course you get to keep a portion for your trouble.

- Child scams, children in war torn countries where the person only wants to get their child out of the country for his protection.  The scammer will meet up later to claim their child or not.

- Wash wash, this person in hiding due to political turmoil, has all their money in a case that has been died black to hide it from authorities and others wanting to get their hands on it.  You pay for a chemical to remove the black ink from the money and it is yours.  There is a slight of hand involved where a few dollars are actually died and cleaned to prove that the money is real.  The rest is actually construction paper.

- For Hire, where you are offered a wonderful job with excellent pay.  All you have to do is pay their travel agent for your travel.  Guess what, no job and the travel agent is theirs and is either in on them scam or the scammer himself using a different email address.

There are many more and as I come across them I will try to post them here.

Baiters call them Trophies.  A trophy is anything that they recieve from their Lad that may have wasted their time, or caused them to do something stupid.  The actual trophy is the proof provided that the action took place.  It can be having the Lad tattooed, having him write up fake forms, getting a nipple pierced, taking a picture of himself with a fish on his head, or going on a trip.  This is where your imagination comes into play.  Usually the lad would provide a picture of what they did.  Photoshopped images do not count as a trophy.  Only real proveable items are trophies.

A Trophie is proof of an action of your Lad.  Usually a picture, change of IP address, police report.

In many scam baiting episodes several different trophies can be obtained.  I myself recieved my first trophy today in the form of a fake import/export document.  Why is this a trophy?  It wasted the Lads time in creating something that will not ever get used.  He would have had to pay for time in an internet cafe to create the document which would have wasted both his time and money.

Do you understand a little bit more of what a trophy is?

The goal of baiting is to waste the Lads time and resources so that he has less time to scam from real victims.

Lads can be anywhere in the world but many are in Nigeria and other African Nations.  Most are lazy and don’t want to work.  They would rather spend their days scamming others of their hard earned money.  They don’t care about you or anything to do with you although they may profess their love for you or care.  THEY ONLY WANT YOUR MONEY!

I started reading some of the things they were doing to the scammers and had a good laugh about it.

They were taking these guys on “safari’s”, taking ridiculous photos of themselves, getting tatoos and a number of other things.  Basically the scammers were getting scammed back!

How it works is the baiter (me for instance) responds to one of the many many scam emails that arrive in your inbox.  You claim excitement for what ever the email is claiming, that you won $25,000,000 in a lottery you never entered or that someone wants to give you $15,000,000 for you to give away to charity on their behalf as they are sick and dying and are usually the child of a prince, king, or high ranking public official.

Once you start communicating with the individual, it won’t be long before they demand money for something.  To pay off some official in order for you to get your funds or something and to send them a Western Union Money Transfer.

Well once you get your Lad believing that you believe him, then you can do all sorts of activities with you lad. 

This blog is the details about my first attempts at Scam Baiting.