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Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 12:24 pm
by LordTicklefarts
Years ago, a young lady from Nigeria contacted me as a love interest. I knew I was being catfished. I googled the entire contents of her email and found it in a forum warning against the scammer. So I decided to play with this scammer for a few more months until she (he) moved on to a real sucker. Never succeeded in finding out the culprit. But from then on I started researching how to track down the source of scam emails. Eventually I stumbled onto videos from James Veitch , which showed how much more fun you can have with scambaiting rather than being a detective. I am more focused on wasting their time than tracking and prosecuting them since most operate in countries that have weak data protection and fraud laws or corrupt or lazy law enforcement.

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 8:58 pm
by Meow
Well, after tons of spam crap due internet leaks (and of course, becoming millionaire after cashing out all those random cashboxes...). I thought it will be a cool thing to do would be make lose time those scamers while having fun fooling them around and make waste time instead scaming people.

I was on previous 419eater forum but completely forgot my name and email address used there so... Will start over again. :mrgreen:

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2021 7:53 pm
by Lake Amour
I was helping an elderly family friend with a romance scam he got caught up in. (He recently died tens of thousands in debt because I could never talk him out of continuing.)

I'd heard of scambaiting before, and found info on this (old) site. I thought many posted baits were hilarious so I thought I'd try my hand at it.

My first bait ever ended up in Greatest Hits! Heck, this was easy!

Ever since? Nada. Nothing remotely exciting.

I gave up for a while but I'm trying to get back into it now! Just as a way to help out victims!

LA

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2021 10:39 pm
by huskywowzer
I became baiting as a distraction from life issues. I had a brain injury a few years ago and I have a slew of psychiatric diagnosis from it. I've been a part of Eater for years. This is just a new account since I lost contact info for my old profile. I've been here when, back in the day, we had Scammer Saturdays. Man, those were fun. I made lots of friends and I'm hoping to make many more on here.

Thank you, friends!

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Sat Aug 14, 2021 12:02 pm
by Bertje
Hope you are doing better now!

As for the 'old account' it might still be available over at forum.419eater.com !

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2021 2:19 pm
by dr stephen williams
I read an article about scam baiting, and thought it was funny. It mentioned Eater. I read a few baits, not in the forums, and then forgot about it for a month or so, when I stumbled onto the forums. It arrived at a good time for me, and gave me something to work on.

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2021 9:04 pm
by MrMystery314
It was reading DSW's Turd bait, who coincidentally posted above me.

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2021 11:23 am
by bobdemol
Received a good amount of scammer mails.
Wanted to play with them, I wasn't aware of the scambaiting community.
Saw the 419eater site more by accident and decided to join and learn.
Joined the day before New Years eve in 2008 8-)

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 12:05 pm
by PepeSmurf
During my uni years I received a 2 page email from the "Deposed king of Zimbabwe". It was absolute gold and I wish to god I kept it, one of the funniest things I'd ever read. Obviously a scam, but I didn't 100% understand how it worked. The offer was they'd send me a bankers draft for 15 million which I would cash and after deducting the 10 quid for something I was selling online, WU back the change.

Curiosity got the better of me and I tried looking up what was going on. It led me to eater where I learned the scam was that you'd a fake bankers draft and if you somehow managed to get any money and send some back, you would be the one to cop the fall out once the forgery was discovered. After that I have on and off been straight baiting ever since, nothing especially noteworthy but wasted a lot of guys time and got some funny fake id's sent back.

I've dipped in and out of the forum over the years, but this is a new account name since the forum moved over.

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2021 6:44 am
by Rex Mcbeth
I was watching Youtubers post videos of their conversations with lads. One of them mentioned to check out the 419 website if I was interested in getting started. He constantly refers to folks inquiring us with to fill out form data: "Say it with me, information that we shouldn't share with strangers on the internet."

He goes through a lot of the routines found on this site's tutorials, how to fish for the lad's and keep them on the hook as long as possible. Time is valuable, if I'm going to utilize free time with vanity, I might as use it to waste the time of lads and frustrate them to no ends.

It seems so much like Role Playing... That be right up my alley. Also, I am a Chaos entity and I thrive on contention and nonsense. Figured I would put such disorder to good use. No longer shall I be YouTube's King of Trolls; rather I shall refine my techniques that may help me to become a benevolent troll that target lads. Though, I will be cautious as to not burn any baits... Nobody likes their shrimp burnt to rubber. Perhaps a slow roasting process in order; gradually increasing the temperature so as to not realize they are being roasted. I'll be sure to cut down the heat before the lad is well done. We can't have our fish jumping off the hook before we throw them into the fire, eh.

Okay, I'm done speaking in parables and metaphors. I shall let you sailors, professional anglers, and navy veterans get back to work. I'm going to stare at the back of my eye lids before they descend from half mast.

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2021 6:32 pm
by windypops
Way, way back in the early 2000's, when the still newish internet thingy was a lot more wild westy, but somehow more friendly and inviting than it is today. The naive me would blithely click on every 'interestingly' named hyperlink I was presented with, sign every website guestbook with my rl infors and sit through every cat playing a piano video there was as if it was the first time I'd ever seen a cat playing a piano video. I noticed, I was getting a lot of unsolicited emails with all sorts of interesting offers and deals.

The hard nosed cynic in me knew it wasn't the piano forte puddy tats sending out the tempting and sometimes amusing epistles...

Because I worked in an industry that had been heavily targeted by lads (before they were even called lads) back in the snail-mail days of the 80s, I recognised them as advance fee scams straight off. The person I worked for back then was almost taken in by one. It just so happened, his business was going through a lean period and he very nearly bit. But luckily, while he was weighing it up one of our trade magazines highlighted a few cases of people that had fallen for the 'Nigerian Prince' scam.

Some of the scam letters (the print was barely legible or hand-written on really cheap paper and enclosed in almost see-through envelopes from Nigeria) would have fax numbers to contact them on. So we faxed them with contact numbers that led them to auction catalogue fax numbers. They would have to pay a fortune to download the whole thing. If they ever did call the number back and let it happen.

Back to the early 2000s... I looked around and discovered various sites had already sprung up that were dedicated to wasting the time of scammers. Scambaiting was a thing...!
Ebolamonkeyman, Scamorama, 419Baiter, 419bittenus, Artists Against419, Joe Wein and 419Eater to name but a few. I was off work around this time, waiting to have surgery on my neck, so I spent a couple of weeks reading the funny stories to fill in the time.

After awhile I thought I'd give it a go so signed up at 419Eater after having read nearly all of Shiver's baits. Little did I realise I'd stepped into an alternate universe of cats doing funny things. And cheese recipes. It all went rapidly downhill from then.

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2021 2:51 pm
by mfb
For me it was just realizing the scammers are counting on most people *not* replying, that if that vast majority of recipients, who recognize the scam right off, were to even send one reply, the scammers would be swamped. So I thought I do my bit to help put them out of business.

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2021 7:34 pm
by bobdemol
^^ I remember, lots of members joined here because being scammed and decided to fight back.
Whatever brought you here - A warm welcome to you (give those bastards HELL) - AND keep us up to date with your ongoing adventures (post them in https://aff.419eater.com/viewforum.php?f=11 8-)

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2022 1:18 am
by BurnerPhone
was a member on the old board years ago, and unfortunately got away from it once I started traveling and didn't have access to a lot of free time.

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2022 10:49 pm
by agnomen
I started off by reading the Shiver posts, it still amazes me what he managed to get the lads to do, back then I signed up as waynekerr in 2003 but never posted and don't have a Scooby what the password is. I then signed up with my current addy in 2012 and stuck around for 4 years and here I am again 6 years later.

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Wed May 04, 2022 3:24 pm
by TheDane
One late evening in August 2010 I was bored (and possibly stoned), and I was surfing the net for entertainment. I no longer remember how, but I stumbled upon JoJoBean's famed bait of Kevin Tony Williams. 4 hours later, I was in tears from laughing, and I thought "waittaminnit... I could do this!" I googled a bit, stumbled upon Eater, and the rest is history that would be long forgotten, if it wasn't for the old forum. :D

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2022 9:28 am
by Jimlad
For me it was reading about what Shiver got up to. When I first read his exploits I laughed so hard I pulled a muscle in my back!
I never managed to get to anywhere near his baits' sophstication but I was proud of my first really successful bait in which I convinced a lad(ette) that I was piloting my experimental warp driven starship back and forth to Jupiter three times a week. Several trophies ensued.

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2022 2:13 pm
by Myon359
Around say, three, four years ago, I was going around on the internet looking for something, can't remember what, and ran into the text of James Veitch baiting a "dying widower" lad. I'd never laughed so much, but I soon forgot about it until I ran into Veitch again sometime in 2022. This time, I decided that I had to try doing this for myself. I did some Googling and found Mugu Guestbook. My first lad was "Barrister Edet Okon". The bait lasted three days and consisted of me being as stupid as possible. Despite being a complete newbie, I actually got the guy to beg me to leave him be. Deciding I liked doing this sort of thing, I continued, and eventually joined 419Eater after, again, running across it by accident.

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2023 1:46 pm
by diabhal
I got a email years ago from some lad about receiving money, that was the first scam email I got. I got another email last Saturday from Uganda saying they where offering me 50.7 million dollars. So I got back to them and done abit of research, I got it's personal Gmail account, it is also using a email from mail.com.

So, I will play with it and see what other information I can get from it.

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Wed Jun 07, 2023 2:40 am
by Guanaco
Many years ago, before gmail and good spam filters existed, I got some scam opening letters (at that time many of them where about Maryam Abacha, the late dictator's daughter, in all caps). It was obvious b.s. but the point wasn't so obvious: why would somebody spam those bizarre stories? I really can't remember how I discovered this site, I probably browsed Scamorama before. I think the very word scambaiting was coined in the old version of this site.

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2023 3:28 pm
by Thursten3rd
Years ago, I got taken in by a scammer. Fortunately they didn't get much money out of me but it landed me in a bit of hot water, so I started looking into how I could get a little payback. I never wasted any time on the scammers who got me. Instead, I found this and a few other baiting sites, learned how to bait safely and moved on to others who spammed my catcher accounts.

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2023 1:43 am
by 419 killer
I got lured into a Money Mule Scam when I was 17 years old and working a very low paying job at the time. I was able to pay the bank back over time and I got everything resolved. A few years later I started reading the forums on Eater and a few other websites. I set up some baiter and catcher accounts and started turning the tables on them. I haven't been a full time baiter per se as life has stopped me a few times from baiting but I'm glad to be back at it again. :D

Re: How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2024 10:07 pm
by Merlin
Many years ago (2011-12?), I received a few emails from some folks wanting to share their wealth. One was from a Prince IIRC. With an IT security background, I knew these were scams and I thought it would be fun to interact and steal some of their time. I did some research online and found the 419Eater site and it's wealth of info. I proceeded to run a couple of baits, strung one on for a long while, but not much came of it. I think the lad may have figured out I was messing with him after the many failed WU attempts :lol: .

I kind of drifted away from active baiting, but did come back to read some of the published baits from time to time after that. Getting near retirement, I was thinking it would be fun to get back into it so decided to see what was new here. I was pleasantly surprised to see the site going strong and having a new forum format. I see I have a lot of catching up to do...