Email scammers get conned

A UK computer user has launched his own successful vendetta against email scam artists and written a book about it to show others how to get their own back.

Mike Berry, AKA Shiver Metimbers, runs one of the leading anti-scam sites and has just published a book on his exploits conning scam artists. The book, ‘Greetings, In The Name of Jesus’, is named after the popular greeting used in many scam emails looking for cash.

Berry outlines how for the past five years he found that the best way to deal with scammers is not to delete the messages, but to engage them in dialogue and make them think that you want to invest.

The process is called ‘scam-baiting’ and forces hooked scammers into wasting a lot of time trying to get you to part with your cash. He claims his efforts have meant many have of them have less time to find real victims.

He details how he had them selling paintings to ‘Del Trotter Antiques’, tattooing themselves so as to become members of his bogus church, booking expensive hotels for him and then never showing up and even seeking criminal compensation from Inspector Morse.

More outrageously, he convinced one scammer to write out a Harry Potter novel by hand and another that he was being killed by a mugger outside a Western Union office where he was about to make a payment to them. One even fell madly in love with him when he thought he was dealing with X-Files actress, Gillian Anderson.