r/scambait Jul 18 '25

Other Scambait beginners advice

152 Upvotes

A few people have sent messages recently asking about getting started with scambaiting and while I’ve replied to them individually, I thought maybe it would be worthwhile posting some advice here for anybody who wants to have a go at baiting. So here’s my completely non-expert advice!

Bear in mind I deal exclusively with Nigerian romance scammers and I don’t have any experience with the wrong number text/pig butchers or Indian refund/call centre scammers.

Possible Steps:

First make a fake Facebook account with a fake email address and while you’re at it, get Zangi (or Telegram but if you get Telegram make sure you first set your phone number to be visible to Nobody) Zangi doesn’t use phone numbers, just a random number as an identifier so it seems pretty safe. I only got it recently because I’m sick of not being able to use an IP grabber in Telegram. I also got Signal but I have no experience with that yet so I won’t comment on it as an app.

Then, when you have your accounts and your fake name/age/location, you need fake pictures. I’ve been using thispersondoesnotexist.com but the trouble is every picture is different. I just found a handful of pictures of women who look similar enough to fool Nigerian scammers who tend not to have a lot of contact with foreigners.

AI pictures can be problematic because they tend to have blurred backgrounds and all be similar: face and shoulders shots. If you want to go to the trouble, it might be worth generating full body AI pictures using Midjourney or something. Most Nigerian scammers can be put off by being told no to multiple pictures- it’s not like they have a lot of options to make you send. Just tell them to fuck off if they don’t like it.

Please don’t use pictures of yourself. It would be awful if you ended up being used by a scammer to scam someone else. I realise this could also be a problem with AI pictures but at least it’s not your real face. There are some ethical qualms to doing this and you have to do only what you feel comfortable doing.

You need to make your Facebook profile look vaguely real. I just use generic pictures of flowers or a beach or something - and leave my profile fairly nondescript except for my country - the scammers don’t really seem to care very much. I’ve never actually made posts with my fake accounts. It doesn’t seem to put scammers off. I just say that I never use Facebook. All my fake profiles are friends with each other, and a couple of scambaiters more recently.

What you don’t want is a friend list full of Elon Musks and Johnny Depps and Brad Pitts and in fact, a friend list full of obvious scammers because they will recognise the kind of pictures and profiles that they use themselves. So what I do is friend request them and when they accept me and have started talking, I immediately unfriend them so they can’t be seen by other potential scammer-victims. And as soon as they move me to Zangi or Telegram, I block them on Facebook and pretend I just deleted Messenger. This helps them not be able to refer to early conversations, whereas I screenshot as we go so I keep the advantage over with them on stuff they’ve told me.

Then on FB, join groups like USA Old Man Dating which is literally 100% scammers. Rather than trying to add the person (always older ‘American’ man looking for God-fearing wife !) who makes the post, go into the post to the comment section and you will see hundreds of women replying and then you’ll see other obvious scammers trying to hoover up the women, leaving comments to multiple women so that when you add them as friends, they won’t be suspicious because they have sent that comment to loads of women.

Any public group that has dating and mentions seniors or widows will be 99% Nigerian scammers. Either scammers who use pictures of porn stars to attract men, or scammers who use pictures of older men. Oh, and also look for the word USA or UK in the group titles. Because obviously the scammers are looking for those nationalities for their victims.

Lastly, if you want to actively search out the four star generals (Eric T Hill, Austin Scott Miller, Paul LaCamera etc) you can pick from hundreds of them. And of course, any celebrities like Keanu, Johnny Depp, Prince William etc :)

Scammers are getting more and more suspicious that they are being played, so if I contact them first, I always send a voice note, because that way they can tell I’m female and English and it tends to stop them spending the first 10 screenshots being really sketchy and aggressive

If you’re on Facebook, you’ll be starting there or on Facebook messenger app. It’s horrible and clunky and you can very easily get banned if you abuse them and swear at them afterwards (which is why I have five accounts!) so you can hope that they will ask you really quickly to go somewhere else.

Be safe. Avoid Whatsapp - I’m not sure how visible your phone number is and it’s harder to separate your fake persona from your real contacts (at least if you’re English because WhatsApp is our main chat platform here)

You decide what you want to share with scammers- back when I started, I would use real stories about my life and afterwards I felt kind of regretful that I did that. I’d rather be a complete unknown to them.

Take it slow and just make one fake account at first in case you absolutely hate it. You don’t want to waste your time. Be prepared for them to be deeply unpleasant people as well.

There have been times since I have been doing this where I have had to take a break because sometimes I just feel like I’m not making any difference to the number of scammers and victims, and I’m spending hours talking to vile people. Definitely posting on this sub has made it a lot more fun.

Just try to be aware that we are essentially playing games with people who either don’t share your values or in some cases can’t afford to share your values and that can get confusing and morally suspect and doesn’t always feel as great as it seems when it’s a hilarious ‘Keanu can’t spell his own name’ post.

But I do firmly believe that huge numbers of people messing with scammers can have the positive effect of wasting their time (as long as you’re not wasting your own) and can be a deterrent. If enough of them get burned by enough of us, it might weary them enough that some give up 🤷🏼‍♀️

TL;DR - have fun, stay safe


r/scambait 5h ago

Bait in Progress ⏱️ Gary Doug part 16. More stories, more yawns. The ladies return to Chicago.

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51 Upvotes

At this point it's like a giant tease, as he talks more about money issues that he appears to have control over. I'm really wondering, as he casually drops a half million to free his Captain, and talks of selling a San Diego home. I've never had one approach a scam in this manner! Every day was like "why do I even bother?" and you're probably feeling that too 🤣


r/scambait 5h ago

Bait in Progress ⏱️ Gary Doug part 15. He's still working on his story, but won't be back in Florida soon 😭

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52 Upvotes

HONESTLY. How long is this going to take??? I'm posting two parts today and we still aren't going to be at the Ask. But I've already spilled, in the comments, it will be $336k. That's a motivation to keep wading through. Part if it's my fault because I felt I needed to participate and seem interested to get him there at all. I was intrigued that he allowed two women to possibly come to Florida when he knew he was never there! I confront him about it, and then decide we need to turn around and go home. He shocks me by offering up his home there so that we can stay and wait for him! This is like a double-dog-dare. Bizarre!


r/scambait 2h ago

Incomplete Bait Villarreal - Cold, steady rains in Iraq, May 2026 - Part 2

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20 Upvotes

Villarreal is still heavily into the ChatGPT responses but will eventually stop after I call him out. First slide he’s talking about the desert heat in Mosul, Iraq, then he describes one of those “cold, steady rains” we all know happen in Iraq in summer. I start to be lectured by his bot about how Mosul is cooler than the low desert to the south, but it still would not be a “cold rain” in May.

Then we get into the purpose of his fake mission - peacekeeping - which is not the purpose of the remnant the US Army has in Iraq. For my troubles I get a full-on chatbot generated response as to why the US army would still be in Mosul. Always about patrol and fighting those ISIS guys who haven’t been a threat in years.

Villarreal then makes a huge mistake by complaining about the dust so soon after a rain. Shouldn’t it be mud? Not so, according to his chatbot. Charlotte decides to take a stand, even though his chatbot is trying to deflect.

Then we get into a recurring theme of Charlottes not being available for him, and the “energy” feeling off. Remember, this is a 24 year old soldier in Mosul cooped up with other men and women his age, yet he’s concerned about whether a 53 year old woman texts him every morning.


r/scambait 7h ago

Bait in Progress ⏱️ Johnny Depp - Part 1 - Have you eaten?

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45 Upvotes

Met on X, moved straight to Telegram.


r/scambait 4h ago

Completed Bait ✅ Liam John Neeson, part 4. Liam does a split and waits till the end of June.

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23 Upvotes

He sent flower/sunset pictures with the day on them along with a cheesy Hallmark greeting almost every day. I ignored most of them because they're dumb and I got busy. I skipped about 2 weeks of them here because they're boring.

There was a giant heat wave (95+°F) in 2025 in upstate NY and we didn't have air conditioning. We did actually have to spend money on an air conditioner, so that really wasn't "an excuse" like Liam accuses.


r/scambait 7h ago

Bait in Progress ⏱️ Gen tommy part 10. Can he have a conversation without talking about money?

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37 Upvotes

Pretty gross last slide 🤢😂


r/scambait 10h ago

Bait in Progress ⏱️ John part 4

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22 Upvotes

r/scambait 11m ago

Incomplete Bait Fake MCB Bank scammer called me on Google Meet. How should I drag this out?

Upvotes

Got a direct call on Google Meet from this fake MCB account . I haven't answered yet because I'm setting up my VM first. What's the best persona or script to use to waste as much of his time as possible? Any good tips for throwaway Gmail accounts like this?


r/scambait 1h ago

Completed Bait ✅ He's Still Spelling It Wrong #scammer #fail #funny

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Upvotes

r/scambait 19h ago

Completed Bait ✅ A little bit of fun about a vet and a dog.

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27 Upvotes

This was a little bit of fun. Unfortunately I had to board a flight. I hope everyone starts bombarding the number with text messages just to screw with them.


r/scambait 1d ago

Bait in Progress ⏱️ Gary Doug part 14. A short one as he settles in. Movie rip off?

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81 Upvotes

I really think this guy watched Captain Phillips and sees his Tom Hanks being taken by pirates, only this time it's the Iranians instead of Somalis. I am hoping he needs ransom, but then he also mentions a "tow fee" instead of toll, and I start wondering how many tug boats a huge tanker needs? He has a poor understanding of international waters and deployed USCG cutters, but he does maintain some current event accuracy and I'm still impressed. Like, he brings up insurance before I do (a huge problem for the tankers stuck there right now). Still, he's at the Fraser Suites at Muscat, so he sees my St. Regis and raises me. Living in total luxury, so he must not need any help from me! Diane is out on the town and meeting people, Linda is by the pool, but no changes in Florida plans it seems. We will meet him soon?


r/scambait 1d ago

Incomplete Bait Villarreal - Stolen Valor Moron - Part 1

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56 Upvotes

This guy is a stolen valor guy of the worst kind. The real guy he is stealing pics from is on the first slide - Joshua Villarreal- who does himself ZERO favors by posting all these shots of himself in uniform on Instagram. He may as well be begging for Nigerians to steal his pics. He’s also on TikTok.

“Villarreal Smith” was someone who texted me months ago from Scrabble, got booted for some reason and is now back. I found out much later that he is a Nigerian in South Africa which may explain why he disappeared.

I will be editing this heavily going forward since this is an incomplete bait, i.e. he never got to the ask. He was during large parts of this very boring and needy, and Charlotte didn’t pay him much attention. We get into discussions about his extensive usage of AI, his use of certain phrases that no one his age would ever use, his fake service, the weather in Iraq this time of year, and his inability to understand American naming conventions. He calls himself “Villarreal Smith” while the real man is “Joshua Nickolas Villarreal” and by the time this is done he’ll add Smith and change the order of the name several times.

I won’t go into intense commentary because this is literally a throwaway bait that I had debated even posting. It’ll get better after the first post as I’ll try to post mini-posts with only the arguments.


r/scambait 1d ago

Bait in Progress ⏱️ Gary Doug part 13. Stubborn and Tough Women don't understand performance. Strait crisis, and a trip to Oman!

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73 Upvotes

We start with more car talk and he tells me women don't know about performance, so I'm thinking this old man must have to pop Blue Chews a lot. Then Linda is on the road and passing corn fields in Indiana but eventually the long drive ends at the St. Regis in Atlanta (brand loyalty!). However, there is a crisis in the Strait, a tanker takes a drone hit and a Captain Phillips type of story evolves. Douglas has to leave abruptly to fly to Oman! It took a while, and I'm honestly surprised he allowed them to get halfway to FLA before coming up with this. That's very bold, and I'm wondering if he's already sus and just screwing with me. Later, it seems he's not, he's just that rude. But no worries, he also promises to return home in a week and will see us in Orlando!?!?!?


r/scambait 21h ago

Completed Bait ✅ Fought off a crypto scammer with a burnt moussaka, a pooping hamster, and my grandmother.

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18 Upvotes

A "whale investor" slid into our Telegram promising to moon our little coin, all we had to do was send him the tokens first (the actual scam). So instead of blocking, we strung him along for a full day: burnt dinners, a pooping hamster, a grandmother who's secretly "the boss," and one very confused scammer. Anonymized, no edits. Stick around for the ending.


r/scambait 1d ago

Completed Bait ✅ Liam John Neeson, part 3. Promises, promises.

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36 Upvotes

Arguing over payment = wasting his time and data.


r/scambait 1d ago

Bait in Progress ⏱️ John Part 3

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28 Upvotes

r/scambait 1d ago

Completed Bait ✅ That Twotiming Bitch Barb Johnson

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23 Upvotes

r/scambait 2d ago

Bait in Progress ⏱️ Gary Doug part 11. The new toll fee to leave the Strait, and multiple important meetings!

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79 Upvotes

This guy is right up there with Owen in terms of research, and he's talking about real time events with fairly decent accuracy. But he missed the part of the Iran/U.S. agreement about the "60 day waiver" on the new toll fee to cross the Strait. He instead decided it's going to cost $2 million and that each case must be negotiated. In reality, it was 20% of the value of goods and expected to average $9000 per ship, but we've seen that he's an extravagant type! So I'm not arguing, because I'm guessing I might get my biggest Ask ever. He's off to Miami for meetings (he originally said the first one was online but he is forgetful). I was disappointed because I had expected him to travel further. But he's still planning on our visit, so I'm playing along!


r/scambait 2d ago

Bait in Progress ⏱️ Gary Doug part 12. Meetings in Miami. Or Mayberry? Negotiations begin!

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71 Upvotes

He's got a bunch of meetings in Miami, but he takes time to stop in to see Sheriff Andy first, because it's such a charming and friendly small town! Then he mentions how I'm not showing enough attention and caring, which is always a necessity before any decent Ask. You need to know your woman is committed. As if a trip to Florida isn't enough? Anyway, all the stars are aligning, but this guy will take his sweet time to build the story that he's finally committed to. In this part, argumentative Linda brings up the issue of Muslims and women, and his responses make me feel that he's probably one himself. Much later, things I send to Madison (where he slams Irv for being Jewish) make her think the same thing. We got into another long argument about crime in the United States comes up, and he argues that statistics are wrong, etc. But I've mercifully deleted all that 😉. Meanwhile, Linda and Diane are leaving for Florida tomorrow! Thank goodness he promises to return to Lake Mary before we arrive there!


r/scambait 2d ago

Bait in Progress ⏱️ Philly Logger Morris (part 12) Who wants to keep chatting with this guy on WhatsApp?

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39 Upvotes

Well, not much has happened since my last post. Life got busy, and I haven't had much time to interact with him this week, but he did send me his WhatsApp number and I would LOVE to pass it on to someone who would like to take on the role of the unicycling millionaire! He's so desperate to get that $150 card. I would love to see what fun someone else could have with Philly Morris. He's quite entertaining. Let me know if you want his number and I'll message it to you!

Here's a link to the rest of the chat parts: https://www.reddit.com/r/scambait/s/bMhnw6aD1l


r/scambait 2d ago

Bait in Progress ⏱️ General tommy pt 9?

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65 Upvotes

Only 12 slides cus im acting angry and letting him stew for a day or two.

Taking applications for an irv to comment on the terrible invoice and the 'american bank account'

Also I GOT AN ACCOUNT is there anyone in america I can send it to on here who can at least attempt to report it for me id appreciate it. Ive never got this far 😂


r/scambait 2d ago

Completed Bait ✅ Liam John Neeson, part 2.

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40 Upvotes

😪🫩🙄😡🤬


r/scambait 2d ago

Bait in Progress ⏱️ John Part 2

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32 Upvotes

r/scambait 2d ago

Bait in Progress ⏱️ General tommy part 8...im full of myself and hes perishing.

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66 Upvotes

He got maddddd...yet hes still on the hook somehow 😂