I Scammed a Scammer – A Social Experiment

A few days ago, my roommate (Samantha Clarkson) and I were having fun watching YouTube videos of this guy, James Veitch, who emails spammers who try to scam him.

The results were incredibly hilarious, and you can watch them here.

Well, naturally, when I got a spam email yesterday morning from someone posing to be my co-worker, I decided to conduct a social science experiment.

DISCLAIMER – I have changed the names to protect the innocent.

The first message read:

“Hello HOPE
How are you today? Well i’m in a conference meeting right now, can’t talk on phone, but let me know if you got my message and if you do kindly send me your personal number.

Thanks Jonathan.”

Well, I was not about to send a scammer my “personal number,” so I sent him this instead:

“Hi Johnathan,

Have you already forgotten my number? Honestly, that makes me reconsider our relationship. I thought I meant more to you than this.

– HOPE.”

Jonathan didn’t reply all day, so I, therefore, thought that I’d taken it too far too soon, and he was smart enough to see I was majorly messing with him. However, come end of day, I got another message from Jonathan:

“you got moment?

i need you to complete a task for me.”

At first, I was highly disappointed that he hadn’t seemed to care that he had offended me by forgetting my personal number, but I took it good-naturedly and replied:

“Certainly. What task do you need completed?”

He replied within 2 minutes:

“I’m on a conference call meeting and i need to provide our clients with some gift cards.

Can you confirm if we can get ebay gift cards from the nearest store?”

Really? Out of all the things you could try to scam dude….eBay gift cards? I felt like those were underrated, so I suggested something else:

“Jonathan –

Are you sure they wouldn’t prefer ripe avocados? I know I would. Let me know what your final decision is ASAP. I’m on hold with a local grocery store.”

He replied quickly:

“We need $500 values.”

Ah. Wonderful…$500 worth of avocados? Dang Jonathan…where should I send those to? But before I could reply, he clarified himself and added on to his message:

“Purchase 5 quantities of $500 value ebay gift cards from them.”

So this guy wants $2,500 worth of eBay gift cards…seems lame, but okay Jonathan. I replied:

“Will do – can you send me our company credit card info?”

I would have died laughing if he’d sent me card info, but alas. I got this instead:

“use your card or cash am going to refund you as soon as am done.”

Uh huh….sure you are Jonathan…I’m sure you really are…but at this point, I was starting to get a bit bored and it was going nowhere interesting or fun, so I responded:

“It’s against my religion to use currency of my own…I barter for all my basic needs and use goats, chickens, and beads to pay for things. I’m pretty sure eBay won’t accept those. I’ll just have to wait until you send me the card info…I’m sorry.”

Unfortunately, I think I went too far there because Jonathan ceased emailing me and stopped trying to get me to buy eBay gift cards.

I learned a few interesting lessons from this exchange…

First, in order to have fun with these things, you need to be a little outrageous, but you can’t go too far. If the scammer senses you’re making fun of them, they’ll stop engaging and ruin your fun. However, your replies need also to be interesting enough to keep the exchange humourous.

Second, this is a good exercise in improv – quick thinking. The faster you reply, the faster they’re likely to reply, and the right exchange can result in the most humorous response.

Third, (and I didn’t do this but realized at the moment it would be a good idea to avoid), make sure you avoid replying and having your email accidentally copy your personal info in your signature because then the scammer could get your cell phone number or whatever else you have on your signature.

So – would I recommend it?

If you take the necessary precautions and don’t give out any personal information to random scammers, I’d say give it a go. It’s pretty humorous if done right, and provides some entertainment. I wouldn’t do it all the time, but if you have time on your hands and feel like messing with someone who would normally be messing with someone else, then give it a shot 😉

Until Next Time,
Hope Frances

Photo by Webaroo on Unsplash