I think you need to call his bluff on that horrible passport. I mean, come ON, laughable is an understatement of an understatement for that monstrosity. You may scare him away, but I would just throw out a “what are you trying to do to me? Send me a legitimate passport facsimile and we’ll talk.”
Mangetout, this is getting even better than the Werewolf thread. Thanks for spending time on it, and on posting your results. I’ve wanted to do the same thing as you’re doing, but never had the courage to even start.
Seems to me that there’s a bit of a conflict here, though - do you want to pursue this for enjoyment or to catch the scammers? That would influence your choice of strategy from here on. And if Inspector Knacker of the Yard were to take this seriously, I’d imagine they’d want to take over the entrapment.
I don’t think there’s any hope of me catching the scammers - so I’m not going to try that - indeed baiting them like this is something the police advise against. What I can do is to waste their (the scammers, not the police) time and resources, and piss them off.
Patrick Adams has come back with a simple demand for contact details:
He still hasn’t sent me the promised picture of Mrs Grace, so I’m going to push for that. I’m not going to give him my telephone number, but I can set up a fax-to-email service for free (well, free to me - premium rate for him to send me stuff!), and I’ll make some excuse about the rest.
I actually spoke to one once (I turned off caller ID on my phone). He didn’t know which scam it was he was answering the phone to - he was meant to be a Czech man in Scotland, but sounded more like an African man in wherever, though he did change his tune when I reminded him what scam it was he was involved in. (It was the hotel one - I told him I have a golden shower in every room.)
The waffle about expenses is just another way of saying “my pockets are overflowing with banknotes”. I’m guessing he won’t take me up on my fax suggestion, as he won’t want other people in the loop.
There was a “Dateline” program on NBC last night about this very thing. One of the segments dealt with a scam-baiter named Bill – I assume he’s retired or otherwise independently wealthy, as he spends most of his time tying up the time and energies of internet scammers.
One thing I don’t quite get – what’s the purpose of using the bilkster language?
Dunno. Mostly to confound, I suppose. Blikster was something I invented (but never actually used) back when I was baiting Mr Austin Wemba - I just used it as an excuse for why Dick Dastardly’s command of the English Language was so poor.
Scambaiting always needs some kind of twist like that; if you try to deal straightforwardly with these folks, it’s all over far too soon.
This is great! If it had just been me I think I’d have used Babelfish and translated from English into some other language - say, Dutch - and then back again. But Blikster is excellent, and looks sort of like Old English and sort of like some other European language, which is amazing really.
I pasted a few sentences of Blikster into one of those online language identifiers; it came back with Slovakian, Croatian, Catalan or Czech.
If I get as far as sending love letters from Mr Tsedd (Ecks’ assistant) to Mrs Grace, I’m going use an online translation to German and back to English.
I’m not actually going to bother buying a phone - I think I’ll consider this operation a success if I get a picture of Mrs Johnson and a bonus if Patrick sends threatening emails to Mange and Dastardly. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stall things for long enough to get Tsedd on the scene and have him fall in love with Mrs Johnson. maybe…
If you play him long enough, see if you can get him to call your associate in the States. You know, at my favorite number, 202-456-1414. Alternately, use the appropriate number for your anti-scammer law enforcement department.
This has been great fun. I was almost late to work today, reading this thread. I can hardly wait to see how it all works out. Keep up the good work, Mangetout!
No further updates at present; it’s usually around midday when I get something. I’m thinking I might kill off Ecks - a tragic accident - crushed beneath the wheels of a bus as he rushed unthinking across the street in his haste to reach the mobile phone store before it closed. Tsedd can then jump in and try to wrap things up. It would be interesting to see if these scammers would just shrug off the death of one of their marks.
I’m not going to do that until Ecks has received the picture of Mrs Johnson - it looks as though that will be coming today. My guess is that she will be a grandmotherly white woman.
