Scamming Land Scammers Back

[Steve K.]

Alright BP brain trust, I need help coming up with ideas for how to get back at land scammers because there are so many right now they're driving me crazy. I sold a few land parcels in my area last year and ever since then I get a few calls a week from people impersonating the real owners of a property, trying to get me to list it for them. I'm getting good at sniffing them out thanks to these common red flags: they often have a foreign accent, they can't meet in person, they are looking for a quick cash sale so they're okay with me listing it below comps, don't want a "For Sale" sign placed at the property, etc. 

I usually just look up the real owner in public records, skip-trace their contact info, let them know someone is trying to use their land for a scam and offer to put a sign up at the property that says "NOT FOR SALE" (ironic for a real estate agent right?). Sometimes I can't get in touch with the real owner right away however so it can take up a bit of my time. While I'm waiting to get in contact with the real owner, I ask the "seller" for ID, a copy of the deed, etc. to vet them before wasting any more time. Lately I've even gotten convincing fake ID's and fake photos of the deed though and I even had to have my title company do an O&E on one property where I couldn't find the real owner anywhere and the scammer was pretty convincing. If you're not familiar with the scam I'm talking about, it's this one and it's super common right now: 

https://www.nar.realtor/magazine/real-estate-news/law-and-et...

Here are some other threads about it on here:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/311/topics/1096347-sell...

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/530/topics/1124674-bewa...

Apparently these scammers are having some success. There was even a case a few years ago in CT where the buyer started building a house on the property and sold it again before the real owner found out it had been "sold": https://www.ctinsider.com/columnist/article/fairfield-real-e...

Title companies are catching on more now and are not allowing mobile notaries, do O&E's on any vacant land sales including a letter to the owner's primary address from public records, etc. but some of these are still going through with the money ending up being wired to various scammers. Since the scammers are overseas, authorities can't do much about it after the fact unfortunately. 

Anyway my question to you all, especially the criminal masterminds here on BP, is how can I really mess with these scammers? I have a phone number (nothing turns up when I use reverse phone look up obviously) and they all use an outlook email. I have some ideas like giving their number out to wholesalers or whoever texts me 10 times a day asking if I need help finding health insurance, but I'd love to hear your ideas as well. So far I have just been stringing them along asking them to complete or provide documents for me (sellers property disclosure, listing agreement, survey, etc.) and then I pretend I never got them and ask for those same documents again and again and again until they get annoyed and stop replying. How can I scam these scammers back good though? Any ideas?