Scamming the e-mail scammers
PARIS: Ever been tempted to respond to that e-mail message offering untold millions from the relatives of a deposed African dictator?
For some, replying is a rewarding hobby.
Interpol says these e-mail messages - which offer a large reward in exchange for a small advance payment - cajole, threaten and ultimately defraud billions of dollars each year from an increasing number of greedy, naпve and frightened Internet surfers.
“These e-mail-based scams are growing as quickly as the Internet itself,” said Ralf Zimmermann, a crime intelligence officer in the financial and high-tech crimes division of Interpol, who is based in Lyon, France. “Every new user of the Internet is a potential victim.”
Interpol has recently observed West African scammers moving to base their activities in Europe, and a relatively new breed of scam - love fraud - is coming out of the Baltic countries. Love fraud victims are conned into sending money for airline flights to a nonexistent lover encountered online.
In response, the national authorities have beefed up enforcement. The Netherlands, for example, created a 30-member police task force early this year.
Now, ordinary citizens have started taking justice into their own hands. Calling themselves scambaiters, these individuals from around the world trade tips, tales and “trophies” on thriving discussion boards at 419eater.com, scamorama.com and aa419.org.
Scambaiters turn the tables and scam the scammer. They antagonize, humiliate and frustrate scammers who think they have an unwary victim.
“My reason for scambaiting is to waste the time and resources of the scammer,” said Scam Patroller, who declined to provide any identification beyond an e-mail address.
“Each minute a scammer spends on my bait cannot be used to scam a real victim.”
Their motives may be altruistic, but not all law enforcement officials approve of their tactics, which can include entrapment and the public humiliation of having embarrassing photographs posted on the Internet.
“At first you might smile and think the trophy photographs are funny, but I have seen some with fraudsters in highly degrading positions,” said Zimmermann of Interpol. “They are fraudsters and they are not good people, but they have their human rights.”
To Jason dinAlt, a scambaiter interviewed in an online chat, the scammers are criminals who deserve any ridicule they receive.
The humiliations delivered by scambaiters can be as elaborate as the scams themselves, and they range from photographs with silly signs to complex and expensive trips to pick up nonexistent payoffs.
“My most prized trophies are not physical ones, they are events,” dinAlt said. “My lad traveled 300 kilometers four times to pick up money that didnt exist and he was physically thrown out of the moneygram office and told to never come back.”
Prized scambaiter trophies include photographs of the scammers and their accomplices holding signs intended to humiliate them, saying things like “I am a bad person” or other statements unsuitable for print. The site 419eater.com uses photographs of scammers holding signs as navigation tools for the Web site.
Other images involve embarrassing additions to the photograph, like a scammer holding a fish on his head or hugging a goat, an animal considered filthy in the Muslim countries where much scamming originates.
One scambait video that turned into a YouTube hit shows scammers in a Lagos grocery store acting out the Dead Parrot sketch from the television series “Monty Pythons Flying Circus.”
Over the course of a lengthy correspondence, the scammers had been persuaded that the video would be entered into a contest offering a cash prize.
The creator of that scambait, who identifies himself as Michael Berry, published a book of his favorite scambaits, titled “Greetings in Jesus Name! The Scambaiter Letters.”
In another bait, Berry persuaded a scammer to carve a full-scale wooden replica of a Commodore 64 computer keyboard.
Like all scambaiters interviewed for this article, Berry, the founder of 419eater.com, declined to speak on the phone or provide a verifiable identity.
“I wont give out my home number to anyone for obvious reasons of anonymity and safety,” Scam Patroller said in an e-mail exchange, adding that his companion did not fully approve of his hobby. “She often worries about me baiting criminals.”
Cloaking themselves in digital anonymity through proxy servers and fake e-mail addresses, scambaiters invent multiple personalities and sprinkle e-mail addresses in Web site comments as bait.
“I usually limit myself to 10 different personalities at a time,” said dinAlt. “Beyond that it gets too confusing to keep up with each story line.”
Responding to e-mail solicitations from scammers, the scambaiters start an exchange with the aim of moving up the hierarchy of the scam operation.
