How Cazzy foxed email fraudsters

She was a well-meaning Welsh vicar. Or she was a naive sheep farmer. Or a pop-music promoter.

In short, Cazzy Jones was just the sort of sucker that internet fraudsters are looking for.

She appeared to swallow the most unlikely tale. She seemed on the verge of handing over money to the crooks.

And yet time after time, to the growing fury of the scammers, Cazzy Jones parted with not a penny but came up with all sorts of plausible queries and delays.

Sometimes she kept the crooks talking by email for months. She wasted their time, kept their computers busy. When she chose the moment, she told them what a useless, stupid, illiterate bunch of idiots they really were.

And then, having notched up a few dozen successes, Cazzy published a book containing six of the best.

For anyone whose computer regularly attracts "Nigerian Scam" emails, it is a great read. You can only guess at the spitting fury on the other end of the email line.

Cazzy turns out to be David Cooper, a 46-year-old solicitor specialising in employment law living in Pattingham.

"It all began when I was captain of a chess club," he says. "There were about 50 captains in the national league and suddenly we were all targeted in a mass emailing by the scammers. I wanted to get even."

Most people simply delete such emails but every year a few Brits fall victim to what seem like genuine hard-luck stories or schemes to move millions of dollars out of Africa.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw was the focus of a scam last month. A mass emailing to his supporters claimed he had lost his wallet and invited donations. It is understood no-one paid up.

A typical gambit is an email suggesting the sender wants to move money but needs an honest agent in the West. You have been nominated as a trustworthy person and, in return for moving a few million dollars, you will be paid £1 million commission. After the first exchange of emails, the scammers ask for an up-front payment. Some punters pay repeated amounts of money before they realise it's a trick.

David Cooper set up a new email account in the name of Cazzy Jones and decided to cause the scammers as much aggravation as possible. He became a scam-baiter.

First into the frame was Daniel Kwame doh-Ehiekpoor, allegedly a merchant banker in Ghana. His branch had unexpectedly made $3 million profit "which my head office are not aware of" and would Cazzy share the loot by posing as "the original depositor of this fund"?

"I am very interested," replied Cazzy. "I urgently need to raise £1 million for commercial purposes."

Kwame tried to spring the trap, asking for full passport and driving licence data as well as Cazzy's bank details and a photo. Clearly, some identity-theft fraud was planned.

Cazzy sent back a photo of a Russian girl from another email scam and said her passport was at the Russian Embassy.

Kwame emailed to find out why she had not sent her details – and what was the Russian connection?

And so it goes on, for more than six weeks. By the time it was over the scammers were floundering and Cazzy was calling all the shots, leading the crooks to believe £7,500 was on the way, asking them to meet her at Accra airport and suggesting she had chatted to the police.

This prompted a telling-off in broken English: "You are very disrespectful by writting to a law enforcement officers" which came from Kwame's accomplice who signed himself "Barrister Jude Agwu, Attornet at Law."

Finally, Cazzy revealed what was really going on and told the crooks: "Consider yourselves thrashed."

The emails from Ghana fell silent.

At his home, David Cooper reflects on the sheer fun of winding up the scammers. "I had seen other people doing this on the internet but they seemed a bit self-indulgent. I thought, why not give it a try, with a view to publication?"

The book was produced, with Arts Council support, by the internet publisher YouWriteOn.com

Although David tried to follow a rough plot, he admits that much of the time he was "flying by the seat of my pants" as the demands from Africa unfolded. "It didn't always work. The ones in the book are some of the most successful. Sometimes the scammers saw through what I was doing. I took a lot of vicious abuse.

"I really got to like Cazzy. Sometimes she was a sheep farmer. Once she was a mercenary and once a plastic surgeon based in Ireland. We never knew what was going to happen next."

Although the book is riotously amusing, David acknowledges there is a serious side to these scams which regularly part people from their money. Sadly, the police seem powerless. But if more emailers followed the example of "Cazzy Jones" and led the scammers on an anonymous and untraceable wild-goose chase, who knows what might happen?

"If we all did this, we would stop them," says David Cooper. "Holding them up to ridicule and public disdain is one of the best things we can do. If we waste their time and make them look foolish, that is half the battle."

* Revenge on the Scammers – Six of the Best and Other Tales is available from Amazon.co.uk priced at £7.99, and is published on-line by YouWriteOn.com