The longest of the longtime Zoners have heard plenty about this already, but it sounds like I have a fresh victim!

Back in late 2002 I heard about scambaiting, and decided to try it myself. Next time I got a letter from a Nigerian prince, I responded by creating the fictional character "Rooster T. Cockburn", a filthy-rich Texas oilman, ably assisted by his chief-of-staff Arnold Hamenegger; and set up a "business collaboration" Web site for Rooster's oil company, "Petrocock Enterprises". And I gave the scammer an account, where we would work out the logistics of flying the company jet first to Baghdad on legit reconstruction business, then have an "emergency landing" in Lagos Nigeria, where we'd pick up the chest full of cash.

I should resurrect the site, because there's way too much of the story to tell in a post (or ten). Along the way I created a second fictional scammer, a youngster just breaking into the business who seems to be trying to poach the first guy's territory; and I got them talking, and got the first scammer mentoring my second one. Finally, for the endgame, I set up the Web site with a front-page memo from Rooster warning the entire team that he suspected a scam, had blocked access to the site by the scammer (thus, he got in by mistake, and shouldn't have seen the memo), and...this is the best part...Rooster was working with an old friend at Interpol to bust the scammer.

Last I heard of him was an email to his "protege", tersely saying he was leaving for Ireland and he'd get back in touch some day.

Two months later, I heard on the news that Interpol had busted a Nigerian scammer in Ireland. I can't be 100% sure, but it sounded an awful lot like "my" guy. I like to think that I shook him up so much, he made a stupid mistake that led to his arrest.

Ya know, now that we have DamnTikiWiki, we could play the scambaiting game again at an even higher level, with that MO of a "collaboration" site. Wanna play?