One of my guilty pleasures, while hanging out on the Internet, is to listen to - or read - people winding up scammers.
This army of people are often called 'scambaiters'. They spend their time replying to the emails or responding to phone calls in order to use up the scammers' resources and time in an attempt to prevent real marks from being targeted.
I find myself laughing out loud at some of the shenanigans the scambaiters get up to.
While visiting YouTube a few weeks ago, I was recommended a video from someone who I wouldn't technically call a 'scambaiter' as such. He's more than that. He's a comedian who baits scammers.
He's James Veitch.
Veitch has a TED Talk comedy routine that has been viewed by at least a million people. In it, he tells a story about how he responded to a scam emailer who was trying to steal money by masquerading as a legit gold shipping business.
The interaction between both Veitch and 'Solomon' had me laughing out loud.
Another TED video has 747,000 views - as of the time of writing - and it's just as funny as the original. In that one, the new scammer is trying to offload diamonds.
Once again, Veitch strings the scammer along in such a hilarious way.
I found the videos so great that I ended up looking for more.
And I found them.
Veitch has mini videos on YouTube, and also on Amazon Prime if you have that, called Scamalot. In those, he shares more of his email shenanigans with the people out there looking to rob you blind.
My search for Veitch material resulted in me finding out he has a book titled 'Dot Con: The Art of Scamming a Scammer'.
I bought it a few days ago.
The book contains all of the emails I had already seen on YouTube/Scamalot, but there are a few things that were edited out of his videos that were interesting to see and might appeal to those who know Veitch from his vids.
I hope it's fair of me to state that I prefer watching the videos because Veitch is great at what he does in front of an audience.
With that said, I am confident I would have enjoyed reading Dot Con a lot more if I hadn't viewed all of Veitch's content before I read it in book form. Therefore, I am equally confident that Dot Con readers - who might not have seen Veitch's videos - will get a better experience if they were to find the book first and then journey to the videos.
No comments:
Post a Comment