Beating E-Mail Con Men at Their Own Game

Feb. 10 -- If you've ever received an unsolicited e-mail from a stranger in a foreign land offering to transfer vast amounts of wealth to your bank account in return for a small upfront fee, let's hope you deleted it.

Chances are the e-mail came from came from someone running what law enforcement officials call advance-fee fraud, or a 419 scam (after the pertinent section of the criminal code of Nigeria, where many of the fraudulent e-mails originate.)

But for those who are looking for a more creative way to deal with the e-mails, idle minds have cooked up a way to get back at the scam artists — and get a laugh at the same time.

It's called scam-baiting: feigning interest and wasting the time of the would-be con man, with the aim of embarrassing him and dissuading him from doing it again.

The practice has led to the creation of dozens of Web sites featuring sometimes hilarious correspondence between the con men and their would-be dupes. One of the sites calls scam-baiting an "Internet blood sport."

The baiting of the would-be scammers is fueled by Web users' resentment of scams and other unwanted e-mails that flood their inbox.

Nigerian money scams are the third-most costly online fraud logged by the National Consumer League, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., that tracks Internet fraud. Despite repeated warnings from the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI, the Federal Trade Commission and consumer watchdog groups like the NCL, the scam remains a top money maker for online con artists.

In 2002, 419-type swindles accounted for 4 percent of the $14.6 million in Internet fraud losses reported to the NCL's National Fraud Information Center. (The top two categories were online auctions — 90 percent — and general merchandise fraud — 5 percent.)