Every year, thousands of Americans are suckered out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by a burgeoning number of West African e-mail hucksters. Law enforcement agencies have done little or nothing to track down these far-flung perpetrators. Enter Paul Kinsella of New Athens, Illinois. In this week's feature, RFT writing fellow Nicholas Phillips delves deep into the mindset that governs this full-time -- and quite obsessive -- scam baiter. As Kinsella put it, "I like being a jerk." And
In case you haven't seen it, our cover story this week spotlights the online hijinks of Paul Kinsella, alias Calvin Huckle.Huckle is a "scam baiter" whose primary joy in life is turning the table on West African e-mail scammers. He does it by posing as a naive victim and wasting as much of the fraudster's time and money as possible. To give you a taste of how he operates, here are three morsels transcribed from his Web site, 419hell.com.419hell.com1) Calvin Huckle on the phone with "Diplomat Alb
419hell.com"Sweet Candy," a romance scammerOkay. One last day to pimp this week's cover story prior to it being lost in cyberspace once we publish our next issue. As you may know, the article spotlights the online hijinks of Paul Kinsella, alias Calvin Huckle.Huckle
is a "scam baiter," which he describes thusly: "person who uses any of a variety of techniques to annoy, harm or waste the time of a scammer, usually by responding to fraudulent e-mails." But Kinsella is somewhat unique in that he lo
