Book ID please

[D'wards]

About ten years ago in the Guardian on Saturday magazine they had an article about a book where someone had engaged with email fraudsters and published the results.

It was very much in the Henry Root/ Tinewasters Letters tradition.

I recall one bit where he had engaged with a person claiming to be a young Russian woman. As their email exchanges continued she started to mention her mum was sick. Ijust recall he used the phrase "I'm very sorry to hear of your mum's illness and hope it doesn't progress into a condition which means you have to tap me up for a few quid".

Any ideas?

 

[yield]

Dave Gorman or James Veitch?

 

[D'wards]

Dave Gorman or James Veitch?

James Veitch sounds exactly like it but I'm certain the article was longer than five years ago

 

[D'wards]

Defo not Dave Gorman cos I've been aware of him for ages

 

[D'wards]

Found it! I recalled a line from the article where the potential Russian bride tells him her and her mum are having chinese hen for dinner and he says "she loves her Chinese hen".
So I searched on that phrase

 

[farmerbarleymow]

I've got a book about that - a lot of things like 419 scams and so on. Will see if I can find it.

eta - Greetings in Jesus Name - the scambaiter letters by Mike Berry (ISBN 9781905128082) (I've got the 2006 paperback so maybe a bit before the one you are thinking of)

He basically strings along the scammers and try to make them lose money by travelling to foreign countries, and so on.