Scambaiter Narratives of Victims and Offenders and Their Influence on the Policing of Fraud

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Abstract Scambaiters have emerged as a proactive means to targeting fraud offenders. Put simply, scambaiters act as an incapacitator, seeking to deliberately engage fraud offenders to waste their time and reduce their communication with genuine victims. For some, this is a deliberate act of vigilantism that seeks to respond in a way that authorities (such as police) cannot. This article uses a well-known scambaiter website, 419eater, to examine how scambaiters present narratives of fraud victims and fraud offenders. It argues that victims are positioned as vulnerable and undeserving of their victimization, while offenders are positioned as rational beings and as a criminal ‘other’. This last narrative is used to justify the behaviour of scambaiters towards alleged fraud offenders. Overall, this article argues that while both narratives are based largely on facts, the interpretation and use of these narratives (particularly the offender narrative) are problematic in terms of a broader discussion around the policing of online fraud and cyber vigilantism.