He's a hero on YouTube and Twitch, where he broadcasts live to 3.4 and 1.2 million followers respectively the hilarious scams with which he fights... other scams.
Altering his voice to sound like an innocent granny, streamer Kitboga, also known as Kit, lures scammers into his traps every week and is now in the business full-time. He takes revenge on the thousands of victims of scams - which have increased by 22% in the US in a year - with a lot of humor thrown in.
Often, surprisingly, the scammers, who think they are dealing with elderly, fragile and innocent people, provide the streamer with valuable details about their bank accounts, cryptocurrency wallet addresses, among other information. "If they think we're falling for their scams, they end up giving away too much information," says the content creator.
Once you've fooled the scammers, you file complaints with the FBI. Recovering the stolen money is rare, he explains, but reporting scams to the authorities increases the chances of catching the scammer.
"I call them to waste their time"
One of the aims is to keep the criminals involved in this "bait" for as long as possible, so that they fool as few people as possible.
Sometimes they spend more than 40 hours wasting the scammers' time. Even when they start to think that Granny's money is guaranteed and that the scam has been successfully completed, Kit spoils their plans in hilarious ways. The scammers are usually quite irritated by the situation.
In one case, a scammer spent 48 hours talking to a Kitboga character. He thought he was about to receive 455,000 dollars (around 427,000 euros) in Bitcoin, but "unintentionally", the youtuber "sent" them to the wrong cryptocurrency wallet.
"Why didn't you copy and paste what I sent you?" the scammer asks the victim, annoyed: "Dumbass! You wrote the wrong code! Call the support team and tell them you entered the wrong code!"
"Literally, you're the dumbest, dumbest, most stupid person. I have no words right now," says the scammer in despair, while the streamer does everything he can not to burst out laughing.
In a more elaborate scam that lasted months, Kit posed as Edna, who was being targeted by a Nigerian conman who was trying to win her love... and her millions of dollars to buy a house on the moon.
For hours and hours, the character Edna stalled the scammer. One day, she suggested they get married in Nigeria, a country the con man said he had never been to.
"That's interesting, because all your IP addresses are there," replied the YouTuber, his voice thick as he unmasked the thief.
It's one of thousands of examples of the avenger's work.
"Every day there are scammers taking advantage of people. I call them to waste their time, to explain their 'script' and their lies, to report information whenever I can and to somehow make a dark situation lighter," explains the content creator in his YouTube bio.
"Getting emails from someone saying, 'I knew this was a scam because of your video,' ends up being a really good feeling," Kitboga tells NPR.
It all started when fraudsters tried to rob his own grandmother, who suffered from dementia. "The idea came to me that maybe I could do something," he says.
Emma Bowman
Recently, the hero without a cape adopted a new, more effective approach that allows him to stop fraudsters even in their sleep. He's created an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered trap that sends out a series of "infinite" verification steps for stolen Bitcoin accounts that don't exist - yet another way to waste their time.
"I wouldn't recommend this at all," a retired FBI agent warns NPR. "If it's really just to entertain followers, then, no, I don't think it's the right thing to do."
This is because the scammers themselves are often victims of human trafficking operations and are forced to make the calls. What's more, you never know who you're dealing with on the other end of the phone, warning: some scammers can do much more than defraud people thanks to their hacking skills.
