Scam Baiting Dressup - Real or Fake?

[Tiberius]

Ok, so the "sport" of scam-baiting is the act of opening up a dialog with a scammer in order to lead them on and prevent them from scamming people whilst you do it. I've seen the P-P-P-Powerbook scam-bait, and it is hilarious.

However, my friend recently sent me this scam-bait: http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=177394

Essentially, someone has contacted several groups of scammers, and somehow managed to get them to dress up as superhero characters. How? They don't say. I can't even begin to imagine how you would get someone to buy the materials and go to the efforts of creating and posing in a costume for no reason.

Scroll down to see some of the pictures (they appear after the "comic" the guy made using the photos he got). Is anyone as skeptical as me on this? I mean, some of them I could accept...if the people in them are *really* stupid, but others just defy belief:

http://members.419eater.com/~nurse_nasty...UDSTAR.jpg
http://members.419eater.com/~nurse_nasty...AITMAN.jpg

It seems that the fellow who put this comic together has got a lot of respect out of it, and if I were into earning baiter respect, I would probably just go down the easy route and fake it, getting some friends and using photoshop a lot.

What does everyone else think? Is it legit, or am I right to be skeptical?

[leo-rcc]

I doubt its real. I can't seem to open the link though.

[Rhizomorph13]

Verboten!

"Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /~nurse_nasty/mugux/BAITMAN.jpg on this server.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) Server at members.419eater.com Port 80"

[Tiberius]

Works fine for me :S

[Rhizomorph13]

Weird, it works at Intel but not at my own house. Funny pics.

[Ashes1995]

not sure if its real or not, i cant decide

[leo-rcc]

I still can't see them. Does snopes have an article about them?

[Tiberius]

Well scam-baiting is real; all you do is wind up scammers by making them think you are falling for their scam.

It's just this seems a little far-fetched. How on earth do you get scammers to make super-hero costumes and take pictures of themselves?

[leo-rcc]

I assumed you meant the dressing up as superheroes part. That is an internet myth worth investigating.

[theVOID]

I for one think that the P-P-P-Powerbook case was a scam-in-a-scam.

Jake (i believe his name was) disappeared, never to be seen again, shortly after the conclusion of the scam, websites removed completely, including the scammer's escrow site. I think that he was behind it, that the address the package was sent to was just an internet cafe, the emails and payment website were both his and the tracking number was retained and used to fool the forum members.

Jake, after posting about the scam, received over $200 in donations from the members of the forum so that he could post the item, which would have been Fedexed as cheaply as possible, explaining the major delay in shipping as opposed to the 3 days he claimed to have paid for, the phone number was deliberately faked so it could not be delivered and the tracking number and delivery address were used to dupe the forum members who watched the Internet cafe for hours day after day to see the delivery.

After all, that's what scam-baiting is right? Getting the scammer to waste their time and resources, and the reverse would also be true, getting the scam-baiters to waste their own time and resources.

Seems like an easy way to make a $100.

Thoughts?