Props to you, NaughtyKnight, for baiting these people. They deserve all the grief they get!
Have you ever tried getting money out of them? I remember reading about this guy who was baiting one. He said he could get a few thousand to the scammer, but needed about £25 from them to access the money, and they paid up. It was only pocket change, but funny beating them at their own game!
Money Baiting is generally not allowed these days. If you send off your conversations to the FBI to get the scammer shafted, you yourself could get in trouble. Its pretty easy to get them to do anything once you've had them on the hook for about a month. Especially if they think there is a great deal of money coming for them .
Shivers has baited money out of scammers many times. He is the KING of baiting. www.419eater.com has all of his exploits there. They range from getting his scammers to go on massive safaris around Africa to get the "money" to getting tattoos, to getting them to join his "Church of the holy red breast".
There is a section for Russian scammers aswell, though they are very hard to get them to do anything. They stick very tightly to the script, probably because they cant speak English very well. You might be able to get a trophy picture with them holding a sign, but thats about it.
i think i must be the only real scumbag here....when i heard your story the last thing on my mind was baiting, or combating scammers .....it was....wow...i need to start an internet scam.....now where did i put that camera and my red dress
A major part of the Russian/former USSR dating scam is the agencies who perpetuate the problem, by listing profiles which are either unverified or relatively out of date. A major culprit is www.anastasiaweb.com , who CLAIM to verify all of the 10000+ ladies in their database, yet the reality is quite different. They rely on local agencies (many of whom are VERY dubious) across the former USSR (across 12 different time-zones) to supply them with profiles. When ladies are exposed as scammers, the old Soviet mentality kicks in (ie. they bury their heads in the sand and refuse to admit it's their problem, then when you convince them there IS a problem, they look the other way and blame you).
There are many similar agencies employing such tactics, all designed to prey on lonely Western men, but if anyone knows of scammers or agencies who fit the description above, you can go to www.antiscam.net and report them there on the forum. That site covers ALL type of scams, from retailers, ISP's and all sorts of online scams. The site has been up and running for several years now and has an EXCELLENT track record of exposing these people for the scum they really are.
If you recieve any type of Advanced Fee Fraud (419). You can contact www.aa419.org or www.419legal.org. They are a great bunch of people that volunteer to help victims get justice. Pretty much 99% of all arrests are because of the hardword these guys do. Feel free to visit their sites and donate.
Report all fake bank or scam sites to www.aa419.org or again www.419legal.org. They have a specialsed program that kills fake sites.
Do you want to help stop these scammers taking victims? Well you can. The guys at www.aa419.org with others, have developed a program that kills sites, and it can be used by anyone. All you do is leave it going in the background.
Here is the link SpamVampire
Before you click, I will explain it.
1. What is it?
The Vampire steals bandwidth from the scammers site. It rappidly downloads images that are hosted on the site. It downloads these pictures many times a minute. This causes the bandwidth use by the site to skyrocket. When they reach their limit, the surver shuts them down.
2. Is it Legal.
Yes. It is 100% legal. It downloads pictures from the site the exact same way your browser does.
3. Will it make a difference?
Damn straight it will. This isnt just some drop in the ocean. This is whiping out sites that are conning people. Scammers use these sites in their letters to trick people into beliving they are legitamate. Every site you shut down, you are saving countless people.
6. How do you find fake banks/sites.
The list of sites are updated weekly by the volunteers of www.aa419.org. At the moment, there are over 5000 fake banks/sites. We find them by intentionally recieving spam from the scammers. We look through their letters and send on the info from them. Many contain fake sites.
5. How Do I use it?
Just click the link and the program pretty much does everything itself. You will see 16 icons. These are the images that the program is downloading. You can see how many times you have downloaded the image. Others will be doing it at the same time, so the image will be downloaded hundreds of times a minute.
In the top left hand corner is your speed. Select which speed you would like to use for the program. Obviously, this depends on how much bandwidth you want to use, and how fast your computer is. I usually leave my on 30kb/s and leave it on all day.
Feel free to visit www.aa419.org for more info about this great program.
Please give us your support. Even if you leave the program on for only a few minutes. You are still doing your part to make life VERY hard for these scammers.
Phishing: This is a very dangerous form of scamming. Have you ever recived an email from "paypall" saying that your account has been hacked, and you must enter your details by following the link. This scamming is targeted at getting account details. There is a way you can fight these guys aswell. Instead of just deleting the email, right click on the link they give you (DO NOT CLICK ON IT! IT MAY CONTAIN TROJANS ETC) and paste the link at the following site. Leave it on and it will transmit fake details every 20 seconds. This fills up the scammers box, so he cannot tell the fake from the real. You just might save countless victims.
Here is the link to that site. Phishfighting
NOTE: If you are uncomfortable, then please do not click the link. You dont have to, only do so if you feel 100% comfortable.