Beating E-Mail Con Men at Their Own Game

Feb. 10, 2004 -- 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.)

To Break Dance, Get a Stephanie

Mike, a 28-year-old business owner in Ohio, became a scam-baiter after he received a suspect e-mail from someone named Albert, who said he was the chief accounting officer of a bank who was looking to balance the profit overruns in his financial statement.

Albert said he was looking for a reliable foreign partner into whose bank account he could transfer $15 million. In return, Mike would get 30 percent of the sum — a cool $4.5 million.

Struck by curiosity, Mike replied. And to his surprise, Albert wrote back.

Thereupon began an increasingly ridiculous exchange in which Mike convinced the sender to adopt code names for the both of them. Mike convinced the sender to address him as Mr. Bo Jangles and to refer to himself with the name of an unusual sex act.

Mike introduced a "business partner," Brad Fairyman, and sent Albert a picture — of a male friend dressed in an aqua-colored tunic and tights.

Mike demanded that Albert use a secret code in which the phrase "doing business" would be replaced by "break dancing," and the word "bank account" would be referred to as "Stephanie."

All along, Albert took the demands seriously — to the chuckles of anyone who was following the correspondence.

And many were: Mike blind cc'd many of his friends on his exchange, and they sent the e-mails on to their friends too. It proved so popular that Mike set up a Web site.

After exchanging 100 e-mails over nearly two months, Mike finally convinced Albert to send a picture of himself posing with a sign bearing his profane codename. He triumphantly posted the picture on his site, and had the satisfaction of revealing to Albert that the tables had been turned and he was now being scammed himself.

Bread on Your Head

It's amazing what the would-be scammers will do in the name of money, says Jason, another scam-baiter who, like Mike, asked that ABCNEWS conceal his last name. "They take a lot of abuse," he said of the con men he taunts.

Jason, who signs his correspondence with the nom-de-bait David Lee Roth— the name of the preening front man of '80s hair rock band Van Halen — said his favorite adventure was with a character named Taka, a Nigerian who said he lived in the financial capital Lagos.

Taka had sent Jason an unsolicited e-mail saying he needed $4,200 to retrieve trunks that he had entrusted to a security company for safekeeping. In the trunks, he said, were millions of dollars.

Over the course of dozens of e-mails, Jason repeatedly sent the would-be con man to various pick-up points like the Lagos airport, UPS stations and Western Union offices, wasting the con man's time without sending him any money.

At one point, he asked Taka to visit the office of an imaginary company called the Greater Remittance Incorporated Federal Transfer (or GRIFT), and another called the Mid-Oceanic Regional Office of Nigeria (or MORON).

Jason also managed to convince Taka to send him a picture of himself, which he posted on his site, The Scam Joke Page.

Getting a scammer to send a picture is the Holy Grail of scam-baiting, according to a British computer engineer, also called Mike, who runs a site called 419eater.com. "The biggest prize for me [and a large majority of fellow scam baiters] is the stupid picture," Mike told ABCNEWS in an e-mail exchange.

"In a very short period of time we have progressed from making single scammers hold up signs with silly comments onto them, right up to multiple scammers in a single picture holding signs," the 41-year-old engineer wrote.

He got one scammer to pose with a loaf of bread on his head, and another with a large sign and a bottle of wine held to his ear.

Other scam baiters "like to concentrate on weaving a complicated and funny storyline, and there are some superb examples out there," says the engineer. "Some people just use as many delaying tactics as possible, just to string out the scammers for as long as humanly possible."

Righteous Humor or Justified Offensiveness?

That's mainly the point, the scam baiters say. While it can be a good way to be creative, amuse friends, or just waste time, all say it is also an act of social justice.

"As long as the scammers are wasting their time dealing with me it is keeping them away from someone else who may just fall for their scam," Mike says.

For others, it's a reaction to all the time-wasting spam, or unsolicited e-mail that clogs so many of our in-boxes these days. "This is one way victims of spam can fight back," he says. "You get to waste as much of their time as they do yours."

At the same time, the scam baiters realize their actions border on the puerile, if not offensive.

The object of the sites is to ridicule these would-be scammers, who are mainly Nigerian — and for many Web users who have come across the baiters' sites, the pictures of black men in silly poses can have uncomfortable connotations.

Both 419eater and The Scam Joke Page feature prominent disclaimers dissociating themselves from racism. Mike, the scam baiter in Ohio, is more provocative — for example, he calls his site The Ebola Monkey Man Page. He says he's not racist, just not politically correct.

And he offers the same justification that all scam baiters do — a reminder that the targets of their scorn are criminals.

Deadly Games

It might seem a little overblown to take righteous pride in what may seem a little like crank-calling, but there is no doubt advanced-fee fraud has ruined lives.

One year ago, a retired Czech doctor who lost the equivalent of more than $700,000 in such a scheme stormed into the Nigerian Embassy in Prague and shot dead a diplomat.

The U.S. State Department says organized crime is often involved in advance-fee fraud. Part of the ruse is to have the victim travel away from home to complete the transaction, whereupon he is tricked or threatened for more money.

More than a dozen businessmen, including one American, have been murdered in Nigeria in connection with these scams, according to a U.S. government fact sheet.

The aliases that scam baiters use aren't just for amusement — they're for safety as well. After tweaking the con men, the worst retaliation they have faced is voodoo curses, and they'd like it to stay that way, they say.