Scam baiting

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Scam baiters sometimes trick scammers into ordering tattoos such as this.

Scam baiting is the practice of pretending interest in a fraudulent scheme in order to manipulate a scammer. The purpose of scam baiting might be to waste the scammers' time, embarrass him, cause him to reveal information which can be passed on to legal authorities, get him to waste money, or simply to amuse the baiter.

Scam baiting emerged in response to e-mail based frauds such as the common Nigerian 419 scam^[1]. Many websites publish transcripts of correspondences between baiters and scammers, and also publish their "trophies" online, which include videos and images scam baiters claim to have obtained from scammers.

The primary goal of scambaiting is stopping 419 Advance fee fraud, which bilks hundreds of millions of dollars from victims ^[2], leads to murders of victims in foreign countries, and leads to victims committing crimes to raise enough money to feed the fraudulent schemes ^[3]. Secondary goals include:

Waste the scammer's time and/or money - http://www.yrad.com/convo1.htm
Humiliate the scammer - http://www.419eater.com/html/ethics.htm
Amuse the baiter and readers - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3887493.stm
Obtain a confession - http://www.freemaninstitute.com/419admit.htm

The techniques vary from the benign Freeman Institute's exhortations to stop 419 scams for a better Africa to scambaiters costing scammers money in hotel reservations, expensive overseas calls and customs fees for worthless gifts.

One goal of scam baiting is to waste a scammer's time, normally by posing as a real victim to lure the scammer into an e-mail conversation where the scammer is endlessly providing information to reassure the supposed victim and answering question after question about the next step in the transaction. If the scam artist is talking to a baiter, they are not talking to a potential victim. These baits are referred to as straight baits. Most new scambaiters are encouraged by the more experienced baiters on forums and message boards to get their feet wet with straight baits, as it familiarizes baiters with how different variants of advance fee fraud work, as well as builds the baiter's confidence.

In “Conversations with a Nigerian Bank Scammer”, writer Karl Mamer documents verbose “conversations” over email with several Nigerian 419 scammers. After statements like “Marco, my good and soon to be prosperous friend, you have correctly intimated from my writings on religion and Elvis that indeed, like you, I whole heartily agree that the separation of church and state is both unnatural and ungodly”, “Marco” finally says “I am so scared to meet you with this amount of talking” ^[4]. Such verbosity requires the scammer to read the entire e-mail and in some cases consult a dictionary, as many scammers' English is quite poor. The point is to make the scammer spend time doing anything but scamming a real victim. It also provides more humor to people reading the published bait.

Though straight baits are easy to start and are often the starting point for more complex baits, they can be difficult to maintain for long periods of time. Scammers usually have a series of form-letter e-mails either written by the scammmer or (more commonly) bought from or provided by someone higher in the criminal organization, which is called their script. The script handles the normal path for the scam and the scammer only needs to make minor changes to it in order to fit the specific case, allowing the scammer to send the same message hundreds or thousands of times in a very short time similar to other spam e-mail. These scripts usually start asking for money very quickly, sometimes within the first few e-mails, and as the baiter has no intention of sending any money, he or she can quickly run out of stalling tactics to draw out the sending of this first payment. The usual strategy is to get the scammer off-script; to throw them a series of unexpected events that require a personalized response (which wastes time) and also give the baiter the initiative; the scammer is now reacting to the baiter and not the other way around. What the baiter tells the scammer to get them off-script depends largely on the scambaiter, the original scam and the scammer being baited, but there are several common baiter modalities, usually involving humiliation of the scammer.

Humiliation of the scammer is a time-waster, but it also is the major source of amusement for the scambaiter. The scambaiter will ask the scammer to do something in order to prove their identity or their intentions, such as send a photograph of himself in a compromising position ^[5] or holding a humorous sign per the instructions of the scambaiter, or join a fictitious organization that requires the performance of some humiliating rite of passage, with proof of its performance submitted. A common status symbol among scam baiters is the collection and display of a photo ostensibly taken of the scammer, usually while holding custom made signs, or in odd poses with specific props (such as placing a fish on one's head)^[6]. The more amusing and outlandish, the better. Other trophies can include documents such as oaths and pseudo legal documents, submitted by the scammer as a step forward towards a hopeless goal, or fake checks sent to the baiter by the scammer as part of an attempted check scam (for more information, see advance fee fraud under Check Scams). Scambaiters reserve special consideration for particularly poor forgeries or blatantly edited images, and these, being amusingly bad, make good trophies as "marks of shame" for the scammer who sent them.

"Shiver Metimbers", proprietor of 419eater.com, has in the past had scammers tattoo "Baited by Shiver" on their arms or thighs and send a photograph back ^[7] ^[8]. There are other documented cases of scammers tattooing themselves at the request of the baiter. There is often little or no proof that the scammer with which the baiter is conversing is the one on whom the tattoo has actually been applied. Such doubt as to who is actually receiving the tattoo raises issues related to Innocent Third Parties (see below).

Trophies are kept and posted along with the published e-mail conversation by the baiter for the amusement of other baiters and the Internet in general. Many scammers are now catching on to this practice, and are becoming more and more reluctant to comply with requests for baiter-specified pictures or requests to join an organization as a condition of the baiter's promise to "cooperate".

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Scambaiters will often come across information about real victims, such as names, social security or other government ID numbers, addresses, and bank/credit card information. The scambaiter, on receiving this information, is ethically bound to forward it immediately to the proper authorities (bank, police, credit card companies) and, if possible, warn the victim that their identity has been stolen and they are the victims of theft and possibly a scam. Scam baiter groups often maintain contacts within the financial industry that can work quickly to officially notify victims and stop further damage to their finances.

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Though related in purpose to scam-baiting, namely foiling the attempts of scammers to obtain money from victims, scam warners combat the problem from a different angle by attempting to warn actual victims of a scam that they are being scammed, with the hope of preventing the victim from sending money to the scammer, or at least stopping the flow of money. Dedicated scam warners operate in groups much like baiters, with informants who obtain information about a scammer's real victims by posing as a fellow scammer. Sometimes these informants are members of the organized crime ring and thus provide this information at great risk to their safety. Scam baiters usually do not bait with the intention of discovering the scammers' real victims, but most will generally not hesitate to at least pass on discovered victims' information to scam warners, if not warn the victims themselves. Much like scambaiters, scammers know that scam warners exist, and will sometimes insert an address they control into a list of e-mails given to a potential new subordinate to watch for warning e-mails.

Scams sometimes involve the use of a fake website, such as one impersonating a bank or company or depicting a fake one. These fake sites are usually used either to obtain information from the victim via phishing or to reassure the victim of the validity of the transaction, such as showing the victim a fake account balance for the money the scammer is promising to send. Information about these websites is forwarded to groups specializing in site-killing such as Artists Against 419.

Two of the biggest oil companies, Shell and Statoil (from Norway) were in a fake-website situation, with their websites being copied and used for fraud purposes. Once notified by Oil Offshore Marine, Shell and Statoil themselves acted as site-killers on Fake Shell Website and Fake Statoil Website; the two fake websites have been closed.

These groups contact the hosting company for the fake site and inform them that the site is being used for fraudulent purposes. After being informed of such activity, the host of the site can be held civilly liable for losses arising from victims' further use of the fake site. Being warned of this fact is usually enough to prompt a hesitant host to remove the site. In rare cases the site's host is unreachable or unwilling to remove the site even after being informed of their legal liabilities (some websites and the domain name servers where the website names are registered are under the control of the scammers, making it impossible for a sitekiller to get the site removed or the domain pulled by contacting the host or registrar). The site-killing group will at that point use denial-of-service attack tactics such as bandwidth hogging to quickly use up the maximum available throughput or monthly bandwidth allowance of the site, preventing real victims from being able to access it (and in the case of pay-as-you-go bandwidth hosting, costing the scammers a lot of money).

Western Union is a favorite service of scammers for receiving money, as the wire transfer is untraceable and irreversible. Scammers often do not even have to go to the office that the money was sent to, meaning that a scammer in Nigeria can pretend to be in London, Berlin, or the United States. Scambaiters therefore try to frustrate scammers using wire transfers and discourage their use by sending the scammers to a Western Union office repeatedly to collect supposedly sent money, offering excuse after excuse why the money has not arrived. After a few such attempts, the agents at the transfer office may become suspicious that the person requesting the transfer is attempting to commit wire fraud. Because the baiter and scammer are often on opposite sides of the world, such claims of the scammer going in person to attempt to collect money cannot be verified, but as the baiter is luring the scammer with a promise of money, there is no logical reason to doubt that someone affiliated with the scam is attempting to collect. Other methods of wasting time related to wire transfers are more verifiable, such as having the scammer fill out fake anti-terrorism or anti-fraud forms in order to obtain the transfer. The filled out forms are kept as trophies.

Other times the baiter will state that they want to bring the scammer's payment in person and under this premise will get scammers to book hotels and/or plane tickets for them, often at cost to the scammer. Others have had the scammer turn up at hotels, docks and airports expecting to greet their intended victims. In such cases the humour aspect is exploited by asking the scammers to request characters with peculiar or punning names.

Many baiters' trophies are also examples of time-wasting. Baiters may ask the scammer to paint a picture, act out a scene on video, record themselves singing, hand-copy a manuscript^[9], or other activities as a condition for the release of some compensation. Such activities cost the scammer time to do it himself or money to pay others to do it for him. Such work is usually useless to the scambaiter except as a trophy, though sometimes the item has monetary value (a scambaiter could for instance request that the scammer produce an item as a sample of their work for a reseller in the hope of a pre-paid "contract" to produce more). Sometimes items requested by the baiter are bulky or heavy, and cost the scammer a lot of money to send to the baiter, further draining the scammer's resources and preventing their use against a real victim.

A few baiters have also allegedly succeeded in receiving cash from the scammers in a variation of scam baiting sometimes referred to informally as cash baiting. A reversal of the exact scam the scammer is attempting to run, the baiter requests that the scammer provide some money needed to process the release of the advance fee which the scammer is in turn expecting from the baiter. The scammer, similar to their real victims, believe that a larger payment is coming and consent to send the money, and the scambaiter has at that point beat the scammer at his own game. Such gains, as related by baiters like Shiver MeTimbers, are purportedly donated to charity. This practice is discouraged by most scam baiters because, like the original scam, it is illegal and so challenges the ethics of scam baiting. Tom Craig, a former Scotland Yard officer, says that it would be unprecedented for 419 con artists to part with money and suggests that scam baiters could easily forge the scanty "evidence" of such successes.^[10] Scam baiters, if they do actually receive cash from a scammer, also cannot confirm where said cash originated; it could have been sent by a mule - a third party and a victim of the same scammer conned into sending the payment - in which case the scammer is in receipt of stolen funds. Even if the money was sent by the scammer, it is almost certain to be ill-gotten gains from a real victim and as such poses moral issues, even if the money is donated.

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Baiters are sometimes able to entice scammers into travelling to foreign countries, supposedly to meet with the baiter's victim character or other characters in the bait. Such trips have been verifiably documented by groups such as 419 Eater by tracking flight information and IP addresses of e-mails or other communication, and are informally called safaris. It is very rare for a scammer to leave their country of origin and especially to travel beyond adjacent countries, and as such a documented safari is one of the most highly-regarded trophies a scambaiter or group of baiters can obtain. It implies that the scammer is wasting a significant amount of money and days or weeks of his time on this trip, and also that the scammer has been completely fooled by the baiter. A side effect of such travel is that the scammer is now in a foreign country, often with forged papers (a serious offense in most countries of the world), and subject to laws that the scammer may be ignorant of. This raises the possibility that the scammer may be arrested and prosecuted in the foreign country for fraud, forgery, illegal immigration, overstaying a visa, or other offenses which could result in jail time. No verifiable evidence of an arrest in such circumstances has yet been obtained, and so it remains one of the elusive "holy grails" of scambaiting.

Scam baiters have also solicited telephone calls from scammers^[11]. These calls are usually intended to be humorous and to waste the scammer's time and money on an international call. Many audio recordings can be found on sites like 419 Eater and Scamorama, documenting the conversations of the baiters with the scammers. More common is the practice of supplying the crooks with premium rate numbers and asking them to call repeatedly, citing various reasons why the supposed victim is unobtainable. Though using premium-rate numbers wastes the scammers' money, it can involve an innocent third party who may then become the target of the scammers' threats, harassment and possibly even their scams, and thus is discouraged (see "Innocent Third Parties" below)

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Sometimes a frustrated scammer will use objectionable language or threats in e-mails to the baiter they are trying to get money from. The baiter, playing the role of a real victim, does not stand for it and, like a real victim, will demand an apology from the scammer. Alternately, baiters may, once the contradictions of the scammer's story become glaringly obvious, point them out to the scammer and express their contempt at the attempted deception, demanding an apology and an "honest story" from the scammer. Baiters may ask that the apology be hand-written and scanned into an e-mail, or shipped to the baiter. Such apologies waste considerable time and money and thus have value as trophies. There is speculation that the humiliation felt by the scammer at being caught out may convince them to change their ways, but a simple "rinse and repeat" (e-mailing the scammer using a different baiter character expressing interest in the deal) proves such speculation to be false as the scammer will quickly respond to try to run their scam. A scammer who believes that doing something will result in a disproportionate payment will do it, even if what they do for the money is completely hypocritical.

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Though very rare, arrests of scammers or other people involved in scams related to baits have been documented by 419 Eater's members. A documented arrest facilitated by the baiter, either by providing information on the scammer to law enforcement or by colluding with law enforcement to lead the scammer into a sting operation, is perhaps the highest-value trophy attainable by a scam baiter. Arrests of scammers are often reported worldwide, and even if the involvement of the scambaiter isn't mentioned (few scam baiters would want to be mentioned as it could invite retaliation) the ability to tie their involvement in a bait to the arrest earns the scambaiter unsurpassable respect from their peers.

The value of an arrest is threefold. First, it quite simply removes that scammer from the operation. The arrest of a higher-level "oga" who manages a gang of scammers is an honor among honors for the scam baiter as it disrupts the entire gang's operations and may lead to even higher-level takedowns such as busts of counterfeiting and money laundering operations. The arrest of a foreign contact, such as someone living in the United Kingdom, Western Europe or North America, is also valuable because that reduces the ability of the gang's leadership, often located in West Africa or Asia, to operate scams based on businesses in that contact's country convincingly. Second, it acts as a deterrent by showing scammers that they are not uncatchable simply because they hide behind aliases and operate from countries with lax enforcement. That can convince would-be scammers not to attempt a scam for fear of prosecution, and convince current scammers to re-think their line of work. Thirdly, it cements relationships between scambaiters and law enforcement, leading to increased cooperation and more arrests. Since the primary goal of scam baiting is to stop the scams, the removal of scammers from the Internet is a major step towards accomplishing that goal.

Scammers often introduce fictional characters to the scam, such as a courier, lawyer/barrister, or other interested third party for the purposes of convincing the victim of the validity of the deal due to the number of "people" backing it. Scambaiters use a similar tactic of introducing new characters into the bait plot, extending by stages the range of characters speaking to the scammer until he or she is faced by a battery of eccentrics, each demanding more and more of their time. Such characters have included entirely fabricated personalities; fictional and legendary characters and fictionalized versions of living or deceased celebrities such as David Lee Roth. These baits are documented on 419 Eater ^[12], Scamorama ^[13] and Scam Joke Page ^[14]. The humour for those in the know lies in continuously protracting such absurd communications, including many numerous in-jokes, all whilst building a surreal tangle of supporting detail to stall any doubts.

Another tactic of scam-baiters that can result in reactions by the baited scammer is chopping the dollar. This tactic is used among real scammers; one scammer will get money that another scammer was expecting by contacting the victim and convincing them to send the money to them instead of to the original scammer, or will steal the money outright by obtaining the details of a wire transfer to another scammer and getting to the transfer office first to receive the money. To simulate this, the baiter will introduce a scammer character into the bait's plot, and the baited scammer will receive an e-mail from the victim character saying they have paid the money to the scammer character for some reason, simultaneously receiving an insulting e-mail from the scammer character. Alternately, there are websites created by baiters to which scammers can be sent where they enter the transfer information they were given and find that someone else has already gotten the money, coupled with an insulting letter a day or so later. The baited scammer is now focused on this fake scammer, thinking the fake scammer has his money. The fake scammer character can then do a number of things: disappear, to come back again when the victim character sends his next payment; offer to split the money IF the scammer will do something for him; offer to take the scammer under his wing and give him some "easy" e-mail addresses to run the scam on; or "instruct" the victim character to send more money to the fake scammer and then give the baited scammer the transfer details. In all of these cases the scammer ends up jumping through hoops for the baiter or falling into the traps of other baiters, wasting even more time and effort.

Another tactic borrowed from scammers and used to great effect is the accidentally sent e-mail, or asem. Scammers will often craft messages that look like they are intended for someone else, for instance notifying the "intended recipient" of a payment readied or made with a promise of more to come, and use that as their mass mailing. The victim gets excited, thinking they're reading a privileged conversation and can get a piece of this for themselves, when in reality the "intended recipient" doesn't exist. Scambaiters turn this around by fabricating their own asem e-mails, for instance sending a scammer a message intended for a fictional scammer saying they've sent money, or sending an e-mail to a "friend" of theirs with more money, asking if it looks like a good deal and including the scammer as a recipient of that message. The purpose could be to gain the scammer's interest in a "side deal" that will shift their focus off of the original scam (putting the baiter in control of the plot); to introduce another character to the bait, such as a lawyer, accountant, trustee, or other person with better access to money that the scammer might take more seriously; or simply to interest the scammer in a new potential victim and initiate a conversation.

A tactic used by scammers but whose term was coined by baiters is rinse and repeat. Scammers often will contact former victims who have stopped paying money under a new name with a new scam. A common follow-up to a successful scam is an offer from a group that claims to be able to recover the money the victim has lost the scam, if the victim will cover expenses up front. Scam-baiters, rather than changing their bait, often simply have to change their character and craft a reply to the original scam e-mail from a new account. Most 419 scammers send massive amounts of e-mail, and so do not question where a response comes from as long as it brings the promise of a payoff. Scambaiters use this trick to re-bait scammers, starting the entire process of baiting over again and subjecting the scammer to additional scorn by baiter groups.

Finally, some scambaiters employ the scammers' own technique of mass-mailing a "script" of pre-written form letters to large numbers of recipients. Such mass mailings are called mass baits. The main purpose of the mailing is to waste the time of many scammers at once with the minimum effort required by the baiter per scammer. More advanced mass baits involve multiple related e-mail addresses, each with an automatic response and a reply-to address pointing the scammer to the next address. This can be used to quickly and easily reduce a list of hundreds or even thousands of known scammer e-mails down to a workable number of well-"hooked" scammers that have made it all the way through the baiter's script and can then each be given more personal attention. A mass bait can be set up and maintained by multiple baiters; The e-mail sent by one baiter will have a reply-to address pointing to the next baiter's e-mail account, allowing the baiters to set up a long chain through which the scammer moves. This type of mass-bait is often called a shuttle.

The term "mass bait" also refers to multiple baiters contacting one scammer and carrying on separate bait conversations. This is often done when a baiter discovers a particularly unintelligent-sounding, humorous and/or unscrupulous scammer. This not only forces the scammer to waste hours at a time dealing with the abundance of supposed victims, but clogs the scammer's e-mail accounts with replies, which makes finding and communicating with real victims difficult or even impossible if the baiters succeed in filling the scammers' allocated inbox storage to capacity (the e-mail equivalent of a denial-of-service attack). It should be noted that although the clogging of scammers' inboxes is desirable, the practice of mail bombing - where an attacker uses multiple e-mail accounts and/or a botnet of computers under his control to send millions of e-mails to a single recipient - is illegal and highly traceable back to the attacker, and as such is not used even though the tactic is similar in principle to site-killing.

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Often, a scammer will be hesitant to perform a task requested by the baiter without first obtaining money up front (which is of course what the scammer is trying to do in the first place). Such reluctance may take the form of arrogance or outright refusal to perform the task, repeated requests for money, or even ignoring the task outright. The baiter's usual response is to "slap" the scammer. A "slap" is simply a forcefully-worded, sometimes insulting message from the baiter to the scammer telling them in no uncertain terms that the scammer must comply with the baiter's wishes in order to ensure the continued "cooperation" of the baiter. A slap serves as negative reinforcement and a powerful means of persuasion. The scammer, after all, is after money. Faced with a "victim" who tells them "do this or the deal's off", the scammer will more often than not consent to perform the task rather than risk losing his chance for a payoff. Slaps also have amusement and humiliation value; a common tenet in scam baiting is that "anything that happens to frustrate the scammer is their own fault"; therefore, the scambaiter will often invent hurdles to the scammer's success that the baiter can then blame on the scammer. The resultant slaps are often insulting and are less a reinforcement of an action than they are a taunt. Slapping is a powerful and commonly-used tool; however, if overused, slaps and other abusive communication may eventually cause the scammer to give up and seek an easier victim.

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Scam baiters have, in the past, humiliated the scammer by ending a bait with an e-mail that directs them to a website, forum, blog or other online reference to their entire bait. Alternately, the bait may end with a humorous photo and/or message from the bait character to the scammer letting them know they were tricked. This abrupt end, informing the scammer they were being fooled the whole time, is known as burning a scammer.

The effectiveness of such an end to a bait is hotly contested. Supporters of this method claim that burning the scammer is humiliating and demoralizing, and makes the scammer realize that any other current or future "victim", no matter how credible, could just be pulling their chain. The scammer also now knows that their particular scam is now publicly known and therefore less likely to work. This in turn makes scamming less appealing to the scammer as a full-time occupation, as they'll deal with fewer victims and more baiters.

Opponents of the practice claim that letting a scammer know they're being baited, while humiliating, not only angers the scammer (which can incite them to find a way to retaliate) but educates them as to how they were baited, and thus how to avoid being baited in future. The scammer therefore continues to scam, but is more likely to "sniff out" a baiter and cease contact. This is counterproductive to baiting, as the baiters must adapt their tactics and are less successful at wasting scammers' time. The scammer also is likely to change their script, which may make them more plausible to real victims. The best scenario, opponents claim, is for the bait to continue indefinitely, or until the scammer finally gives up and tries to find an easier victim. They then are never made aware of the fact that the conversation was a bait, and if the scammer has given up they can in many cases be "re-baited".

Burning a scammer does not have to let them in on the fact that they were baited, however. In check cashing scams, for example, a common end to the bait is for the bait character to try to scam the scammer by depositing the check for themselves, with no intention of sending the money to the scammer. Because the check in such a scam is fake, the scammer knows his would-be victim will not actually end up any richer, but such checks can be expensive for the scammer to produce or procure and send to the victim, and therefore frustrating to learn that they have spent resources sending the checks with no hope of a payoff. The scammer never has to know that their "victim" was a scam baiter. Other common ways to end a bait on a frustrating note for the scammer include informing the scammer, after they have sent the baiter a "trophy" costing significant time or money, that the bait character cannnot or will not do any further business with them and no money will be paid for any work currently done.

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Most scammers have notoriously poor English skills and are therefore unable to pick up on the inherent subtleties of a humorous name used by a baiter. Most scammers also have very little knowledge of American popular culture and are therefore ignorant of television and movie stars whose images are used by baiters as part of their identities. Lastly, many scammers send forgeries that are considered to be of low quality, such as images of passports and other identification; even this fools many victims. Scambaiters learn these things very quickly (they in fact learn that everything a scammer says is a lie and everything they provide to back it up is fake, no matter the resemblance of forged document to a real document); what is more difficult to master is not "educating" the scammer as to the faults in his story or credentials, or in what to look for when determining if he is being baited. If a baiter points out the problems with a passport (such as the age on the passport not matching its issue date), the scammer will learn from the experience and create better fakes which will fool more people. The urge to cynically or sarcastically point out every one of a scammer's faults in communication as a source of humiliation is used in some baits. This may increase the scammer's skill which can then be used to better fool real victims, and also increases a scammer's awareness of scambaiters and their methods.

Scammers can be "taught" by baiters that certain things that may seem odd are in fact quite normal. Scammers for instance can be convinced that a particular form is a requisite for receiving a transfer or shipment and will then expect to see the same form next time. Scammers can also "learn" that victims in the U.S. are generally unaccustomed to sending money by wire transfer and will require constant hand-holding. They can be taught humorous or obscene greetings and sayings under the premise that it's the latest slang. This kind of education, usually called "de-education" to differentiate it from harmful education, is beneficial to scambaiters because it increases the number and duration of time-wasting and humiliating tasks the scammer can be convinced to perform, and also makes the scammer more and more obvious to potential victims. Scammers also educate themselves by adopting names and organizations given to them by baiters in their scams. Such baiter identities are designed to be humorous to anyone with a good grasp of English, and therefore are a better giveaway to potential English-speaking victims than the scammers' plots and poor grasp of English have been to date.

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Both scammers and scambaiters send information and images, purportedly of themselves, in order to enhance their credibility. On the scammers' part, the images are often taken from former victims or otherwise depict people totally unrelated to the scam. It used to be standard practice for scam baiters to do the same; however, it was quickly found that the scambaiters' images, even with humorous or intentional mistakes, were being used by scammers on real victims, and such fakes were convincing to victims who did not notice the flaws or recognize the humor inherent in the fake. In addition, the recognition of depicted people by other victims, scammers, or law enforcement is humiliating and sometimes dangerous to the person. Therefore, the use or reproduction of images of innocent third parties is generally discouraged, as is the posting of trophy images without some form of photo editing to make the image unusable by scammers (such as censoring the face or putting a translucent but highly visible "FAKE" watermark across a prominent un-croppable area of the image). Instead baiters will often use the images of more obscure celebrities and public figures, compose a picture from separate elements in Adobe PhotoShop, or send files with image file extensions that are not actually images, making them unviewable, whenever scammers request passport photos or other images.

Some bait plots have truly involved innocent third parties, such as enticing a scammer to send a purported payment to a charity, call phone numbers that automatically make a set donation to charity and charge the scammer's phone bill, or inadvertently specify "fake" addresses and/or phone numbers that are in fact legitimate and are owned by someone completely unrelated to the scam or the bait. The scammer could, given this information, threaten or otherwise harass an innocent third party as a result of the baiter's actions, thinking they are actually dealing with the baiter. Again, though sometimes done, the majority of scam baiters discourage and refrain from involving non-baiters in a bait, and only use personal information that they alone control or that is verified to be completely invalid.

Finally, some bait plots have involved characters purporting to be law enforcement officials or other government agencies. Such "third party" involvement, though relatively harmless to the agency as the scammer has absolutely no chance nor inclination to harass or manipulate them as a result of the bait, is highly illegal and, in some cases, impossible as the top-level domains of U.S. government agencies, for instance .gov and .mil, are tightly controlled. As such, impersonating a government official or agency, even that of a foreign country, is strongly discouraged. Some scam-baiters participate in stings with law enforcement agencies, and as such communicate with agents authorized to use those domains, but such cooperation with law enforcement has so far been rare. Some scammers get around this by using the names of well-known fictional law-enforcement agents, such as Inspector Morse, to trick scammers, as they usually do not have a very extensive grasp of Western Culture.

Some critics point to the fact that manipulating scammers into booking hotel rooms, reserving plane tickets or arguing with bank or Western Union officials also constitutes involvement of innocent third parties. While technically true, the argument in favor of involving said parties is that such services are widely used by scammers to perpetrate their fraud. Thus, any frustration of the scammer with such services at the baiter's hand makes them less likely to use the service, to the advantage of the baiter and would-be victims. By contrast, an individual or small business unwillingly involved in a bait would normally provide few if any services to the scammer, so in fact the baiter does harm in such situations by making the scammer aware of their existence. In addition, the hotels, airlines and transfer offices have business policies and staff training that preclude manipulation by a scammer. The hotel will, for instance, be plausibly and enforceably able to say that the guaranteed reservation booked by the scammer at a baiter's request is unrefundable and will be unswayed by pleas, threats or other manipulation by the scammer. The chances of a scammer seeking legal action against such entities would be slim to nil as it would require the scammer to admit to the attempted fraud, and any such legal action would be easily defended against by the firm. A charity or individual, on the other hand, is far more susceptible to the manipulation of a scammer and far less able to defend against their threats or harassment, and may comply with the scammer's wishes for a refund or be negatively impacted by the harassment. Therefore, exceptions to the so-called "third party rule" are made in cases of services the scammer normally uses that are well able to handle a disgruntled individual, but individuals or groups who do not normally have to deal with scams should be protected.

Baiter groups abound, and many scam-baiting stories can be found on the Internet. One of the more successful baiters is "Shiver Metimbers", proprietor of the scam-baiting site and forum 419 Eater. He has documented many of his more successful baits for the reading pleasure of both casual visitors and fellow scam-baiters, and has also published baits from other members of the 419Eater group. Similar scambaiting "trophy sites" can be found for other baiting groups (see external links below). In addition to wasting scammers' time, scam-baiting has also resulted in the forced removal of hundreds of fake bank and phishing sites through "site-killing" or "Flash mobbing". Artists Against 419 is one of the leading groups that specialize in taking down these fake sites. Harder to gauge is the psychological effect, if any, that scam-baiting has on the scammers. Scammers know that scam-baiters exist. Scammers who have fallen for a bait in the past may therefore think that a legitimate victim is a scambaiter and cease contact ("Once bitten, twice shy"). Coupled with education about these scams that may make people at least ask a lot of questions of a scammer, the scammer may cease contact with more and more real victims, until it is no longer profitable to continue and the scammer finds work elsewhere (which is the ultimate goal of scambaiting; to make scamming more work for less pay than a legitimate job would require).

There are however just as many if not more scammer groups, with people participating in them throughout the world. Many scam-baiters will admit that they are probably only "hooking" the lowest levels of the hierarchies or the scammers operating independently of a gang, informally known as "lone lads". People operating higher in the crime rings are far more educated and know what to look for concerning a possible scambait. They also have the resources to gain hundreds of new victims based on sheer numbers of mailings sent out by people who work under them, and if a potential victim smells like a bait they'll simply cease contact; there are plenty of others to choose from even if that contact was a real victim.

Some baiters refuse to be swayed by any notion of their efforts being a "drop in the bucket". They simply find it hilarious to toy with would-be scammers, and for them the effectiveness of their effort on the problem as a whole is unimportant. For them the reward of the bait is simply making someone that angry and frustrated, which when considering the person being frustrated is a criminal, is many times very satisfying.

In September, many successful attempts were made by scammers and operators of fake banks to shut down sites related to scam baiting. CastleCops.com, a general anti-Internet fraud site, as well as sites like 419eater.com, scamwarner.com, aa419.org, and a host of other major scam-baiting and anti-419 sites were the target of a DDoS attack traced to the Storm botnet. Such actions by the criminal organizations behind Internet fraud seem to indicate that the efforts made by scam-baiters and other "digilantes" has affected the criminals' profits significantly. (See Storm botnet for further information).

Though humorous, and arguably productive in diverting and discouraging scammers, there is a small, though real, risk of harm to the scambaiter. The entire idea of a scam bait is to frustrate the scammer and waste his time and money; if and when the scammer becomes aware his supposed victim is in fact a baiter, death threats are not uncommon (they are in fact a trophy among baiters, as they provide proof of how angry the scammer is). There is little doubt among scambaiting groups that if a baiter's real identity and personal information were made known to the scammers, those death threats could be carried out. Many scammers work in highly organized gangs, operating similar to a telemarketing firm where lower-level scammers send the first mass e-mails and higher-level scam artists receive the positive responses and work the scams from there. These gangs often have contacts in many countries across Europe and the Americas (many of which are in fact actual victims conned into doing the bidding of the scammer), and are thought to have connections to organized crime. Such highly organized gangs would have the resources to organize a kidnapping, assault or even murder of a baiter that had successfully wasted months or years of time and hundreds of dollars in plane tickets, hotel fares, etc. as part of a bait.

For this reason, and also because some of the tactics used by a baiter are similar to those used by scammers and therefore legally questionable (such as providing false information and IDs), sites like 419 Eater constantly remind visitors that scammers are criminals, and to "bait safe". The personal information of a bait character, such as the name, address and bank account info, is totally fictional or fictionalized. Web-based e-mail services hide the sender's actual IP address, since the mail is sent from the website, and such accounts are set up with the bait character's fake information. Phone calls are usually handled using operator-assisted relay services for the deaf, web-based answering services that send faxes and voice mail messages to an e-mail address, and VoIP-based "telephony" services. Images, such as pictures of the baiter's character or scans of IDs or documents, are "PhotoShopped" and/or otherwise obfuscated to ensure that innocent third parties are not affected by use of their picture and that the scammer cannot use them. It is also a valuable time-wasting tactic to provide the scammer with an "image" that is unviewable.

Scambaiters are also highly connected, and sometimes call upon each other to help with a bait. The other baiters could be called on to make phone calls, provide phony documents, play other characters in the bait, take over a bait or focus the scammer's attention elsewhere, or maneuver other baited scammers to complement the bait's plot. In addition to increasing the scammer's confidence that they are dealing with real people, such activities increase the anonymity of everyone involved because no one person is behind the character.

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Scam baiting ethics are double-sided; on one side there is the scam baiter and the other side there is the scammer with both sides coming from a deceptive angle. In a paper titled “Scamming the Scammers - Vigilante Justice in Virtual Communities”,^[15] Lauri Tuovinen and Juha Röning of the University of Oulu, Finland address the ethical issues of Patrick Cain's “Internet's First Blood Sport”^[16] from both sides. They also use the term “digilantism”^[17] to describe the subculture of scam baiting and vigilante justice on the Internet.

Shiver at 419eater.com also has a page dedicated to ethics ^[18]. In it, some of the concerns expressed by those adverse to baiters are addressed, for instance that the scammers are poor and only trying to make a living, or that scammers, however despicable, are human and the acts baiters entice scammers to perform are violations of basic human rights.

Experienced baiters will all have stories about a scammer they have baited who shows absolutely no scruples. A common script used by baiters to illustrate this is to claim in a bait that the only money available to send to the scammer is needed to pay rent or mortgage in a few days, or to pay for medicine or treatment for a seriously ill child or spouse. The scammer will, in these cases, encourage their "victim" to send the money anyway, saying that their payoff will be there in time to replace the funds they will send. Other bait characters have told scammers that in order to pay, they've had to gain the money illegally such as through theft, drug dealing or even prostitution, without a single word of censure (in fact many times encouragement) from the scammer. This is not true as the baiter character is fictional (and such twists are often introduced as black humor; "I had to make the money in the back alley $2 at a time"), but there are many real cases of victims committing fraud, theft or embezzlement of their own in order to pay the scammer, believing that their payoff will allow them to replace the money taken before anyone realizes it's missing. Such stories provide fuel for baiters' resolve, as they are evidence that the scammers on the other end of the bait have no morals and are capable of utterly destroying their victims' lives, not just their finances.