Get spammed by con artist. Hit reply. Let game begin.

June 22, 2007

BY NINA METZ
Special to the Tribune

Most of us delete spam e-mails. Dean Cameron replies. It has become a hobby, of sorts, for this Hollywood actor. To use the online parlance, he is a spam baiter, meaning he tries to con the con artists, and it has led to a number of oddball, who's-scamming-whom pen pal relationships. Cameron's first correspondence forms the basis of his docu-comedy "Nigerian Spam Scam Scam" at the Lakeshore Theater.

The scam in question involves online swindlers -- often based in Nigeria -- who send e-mails asking for help. The ploy, an advance-fee fraud, has been around since long before the Internet, and typically the spiel goes something like this: I have a fortune, but I need a little bit of money to unlock the funds -- if you could find it in your heart to advance a few thousand dollars, I will share my wealth with you.

"I was getting these spams for years, and after a while I just started replying to see what would happen," Cameron says. He concocted an alter-ego, claiming to be a Florida millionaire with a cat fancy and a questionable interest in Filipino boys. "I tried to be as over-the-top as possible."

In the performance, he and actor Victor Isaac (as the con artist) read excerpts from Cameron's nine-month "relationship" with a Nigerian con artist. No money exchanged hands, though when Cameron started posted their e-mail exchanges on his Web site, the jig was up. His scammer had the temerity to be indignant.

Anyone with cable television may recognize Cameron, perhaps most indelibly as Chainsaw, one of the teenage cut-ups in the 1987 Mark Harmon movie, "Summer School."

So why bother in the first place?

"Just sheer boredom. At the time I was working on a TV show [NBC's short-lived political drama "Mister Sterling"] and I had a recurring part, but I didn't have a lot to do. I had to be at the sound stage for long periods of the time -- and they had a high-speed Internet connection. You know, a lot of people do drugs or get wasted on a set. I corresponded with a Nigerian."

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