Let's start by explaining what scambaiting is.  You've had one of those emails offering you 20% of 30 million dollars if you help a deposed government official smuggle it out of their country right?  Or maybe you had someone try to send you a fake check for something you sold online that was worth more than the item was worth, then had them ask you to forward them the difference back?  Maybe you were offered the chance to help an orphan or sick child by sending money?  They're scams, the lot of them.  They're easily identifiable.  Most will mention Nigeria (it's not known as the Nigerian 419 scam without good reason), but other places can be mentioned.  They'll ask for you to send money via Western Union, Moneygram or other similar companies.  This is because the money can be picked up anonymously at their end.  Often the emails are filled with errors, both geographical and grammatical ones.  Don't be fooled.  There is NO share of $30 million.  There is NO poor orphan.  There is NO sick child or anything else for that matter.  The stories are made up and often used by dozens of different scammers at once.  If you're worried you may be dealing with a scammer, go to www.scamwarners.com and ask the people there for advice.

Some people like to play the scammers at their own game.  They pretend to be a victim.  They convince the scammer they're a good "maga" (The scammers' word for a victim - meaning "fool".  See also "mugu" - "big fool") and string them along with their own lies.  These people are called "baiters" or "scambaiters".  Sometimes the scammer will be so convinced he has a victim about to pay out that he can be made to do things in order to keep the scam on track.  Baiters have made scammers hold up silly signs, take part in made up religious ceremonies.  Some have even convinced a scammer (or "lad") travel to other parts of their country, even to another country altogether in pursuit of a nonexistent payday.  Check our www.419eater.com for stories of the crazy things baiters have persuaded scammers to do.

So where am I involved in all this craziness?  I'm a scambaiter.  I mainly deal with romance scammers, who proliferate the dating sites and use a different approach to stealing your money.  They pretend to fall in love with you, then claim they need money for an emergency or to be able to visit you.  Before I carry on, I should point out that I've been married for over 15 years, have two children and have never been scammed.  I'm not doing this as a form of revenge after being scammed before people assume that's why.  So how did I get involved?  Purely by accident.  I stumbled onto the 419eater.com website one day back in December 2005.  The stories made me laugh so hard I decided to join their forum and learn how to do it myself.  A month later I set up a Yahoo Messenger account to talk to a scammer claiming to be Charles Soludo (look him up on Google) and got an add request from someone claiming to be looking for love online.  "She" claimed to have seen my details online, which was a huge lie as I'd only had the account for 3 days and hadn't put the details anywhere else at that point.  I played "her" for several months and wasted hundreds of hours of the scammer's time.  At that point I was hooked, and I never looked back.

Two years later, I'm a member of various other scambaiting and scamwarning sites.  Places to look at are www.scamwarners.com (for all scam related matters)  www.romancescam.com  www.russian-detective.com  and www.dragonladies.org

After having Youtube pull two of my videos from www.youtube.com/romancescambaiter I decided to set up this site to not only host the videos I've collected off scammers, but to also share information to help people fight the scammers.  Knowledge really is power, and I hope that this small part of the internet will help empower people against scammers.