Scambaiters Turn Tables on Nigerian E-Mail Scam Artists

Revenge is sweet — and thanks to tattoo ink, sometimes permanent — for a growing legion of "scambaiters" who have taken it upon themselves to punish the thieves behind those Nigerian e-mail scams.

Posting their exploits online, scambaiters are turning the tables on the scam artists, conning the cons who have bilked unsuspecting people out of countless millions of dollars in a common scam referred to as the "419 scam" or advance-fee fraud.

Typically, scammers start an e-mail relationship and get their victims to send money to people who claim to be dying or who need help to free a fictitious dead man's money purportedly tied up in a foreign bank account.

The scambaiters play along, goading the scammers to jump through extraordinary hoops in hopes of getting their hands on their victims' cash. One con artist gladly tattooed himself with a design that read "Bilked by Shiver" and sent the photographic evidence to Shiver Metimbers, the founder of 419eater.com, a Web site that documents the scambaiters' revenge.