Scammers Wanted $3,000 - They Watched Me Spend It All
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters point to Kitboga as an entertaining, righteous example of wasting scammers' time.
What it is
Kitboga baits tech-support scammers into believing they will get $3,000, wasting hours of their time while he plays along and screen-shares. The scammers become frustrated as it becomes clear the money will not reach them.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2020 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec jackweirdy · 2020-12 · on “Ask HN: What are some channels that make you glad YouTube exists?”
I have sunk many hours this year into watching Scott Brown Carpentry - a New Zealand Carpenter who is incredibly talented at video editing as well as carpentry [LINK] I’ve also enjoyed watching Kitboga - a twitch / YouTube personality who wastes phone scammers time in intricate ways, like building fake bank websites to lure them in if they use screen sharing. One of my favourite videos so far involved “driving to a store” to get google play codes, then redeeming them on a fake google play store while the scammer watched on screen share: [this video]
Recommends matthewmorgan · 2022-12 · on “Americans lost $10B; caused by illegal Indian call centres in 2022”
My grandfather stopped answering his landline telephone because of these scumbags. Kitboga is a youtuber who winds scammers up and wastes their time, and is pretty righteous [this video]
Cites modeless · 2025-05 · on “Coinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data, demanding $20M ransom”
I have been receiving regular spear phishing calls from these guys, or someone who bought the leaked data, with classic tactics like claiming that I need to confirm a potentially fraudulent transaction. They speak perfect English with an American accent, sound very friendly, and have knowledge of your account balance. Thankfully on the first call I realized it was a scam right away, and Google's call screening feature takes good care of the rest. Wish I could forward them to Kitboga[1]. I guess they didn't have as much luck as they wanted scamming Coinbase's customers, and once they had their fun they decided to try extorting Coinbase themselves. [1] [this video]