Lifestyle
To make sure grandmas like his don't get conned, he scams the scammers
Kitboga, a popular “scam baiter” who hides behind characters to waste the time of scammers, has a combined Twitch and YouTube following of more than million subscribers. His aviator sunglasses — a signature look — recall a comically disguised CIA agent.
Kitboga on Twitch/Screenshot by NPR
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Kitboga on Twitch/Screenshot by NPR
Kitboga, a popular “scam baiter” who hides behind characters to waste the time of scammers, has a combined Twitch and YouTube following of more than million subscribers. His aviator sunglasses — a signature look — recall a comically disguised CIA agent.
Kitboga on Twitch/Screenshot by NPR
The gentle voice of an elderly woman named Edna is heard over the phone.
“I’m going to call Ticketmaster and see if we can get us some tickets to a Taylor Swift concert, OK?” she says. “Will you call them with me?”
She’s speaking to a scammer from Nigeria on the other end of the line who is after her money. For months, he’s spent a rough total of 20 hours on the phone with her, professing his love as he tries to get her to invest her millions in a house on the Moon. But the rambling Edna has been testing his patience with her absurd questions and tangents.
When the scammer insists they marry in Nigeria, a place he says he’s never been, Kitboga drops the act.
“Interesting, ’cause all of your IP addresses are there,” Kitboga says on a livestream, his voice now deeper, after switching off a voice changer. The naïve Edna character is one of the many disguises devised by Kitboga, the alias of a computer software engineer-turned-Twitch streamer, to lure scammers into his traps.
Americans lost a record $12.5 billion to internet crimes last year
Kitboga, also called Kit, is a millennial with a knack for improvisation. He’s among the most popular of so-called scam baiters, a term used to describe those who aim to waste scammers’ time otherwise spent ripping off innocent victims. It’s a lucrative gig for some of the biggest creators in the genre who, like Kit, have quit their jobs to scam bait full-time, often broadcasting their humorous schemes on YouTube and Twitch. As internet scams spike, with victims losing more money than ever, scam baiters like Kitboga are trying to get more than just laughs.
Americans lost a record $12.5 billion to internet crimes last year, according to the FBI’s latest annual report, marking a 22% jump from 2022. The bureau says that number is likely higher because so many crimes go unreported. Law enforcement agencies lack the resources to investigate the majority of internet-based fraud, and few victims see their money returned.
But, like others in the world of scam baiting, Kitboga figures that the longer he can keep fraudsters on the line, the fewer victims fall prey to these scams.
Kitboga reveals the ridiculous lengths scammers will go to steal from the vulnerable. The episodes lend themselves to teaching moments for the viewers tuned into his streams. He breaks down the latest scams he encounters, from his own investigations or tips from his subscribers, sometimes learning as he goes. To his 1.2 million Twitch followers — a count he’s doubled on YouTube — he’s shed light on some of the most rampant and costliest cyber threats, from tech support and gift card fraud, to pig butchering scams. Pig butchering is a combination of a romance and an investment scam, usually involving cryptocurrency, in which the scammer slowly works to gain the trust of their victim before convincing them to invest money they’ll never get back.
“Getting emails from someone saying, ‘I knew that this was a scam because of your video,’ ends up being a really cool mission-accomplished type feeling,” Kitboga said.
It wasn’t so long ago that Kitboga himself was ignorant of the types of scams he now encounters daily.
Kit was further inspired to start scam baiting because scammers had been taking advantage of his grandmother
He was inspired to start scambaiting in 2017, after coming across a YouTube clip of “Lenny,” a beloved chatbot designed to trick telemarketers into thinking they are talking to a live person. The bot was an early scam baiter: Lenny wastes the time of spammers and scammers as the recorded voice of a forgetful old man spits out lines prompted by pauses on the other end.
It was then that Kit realized that tech support scams were a thing. He thought of his grandmother, whose dementia made her a more vulnerable target, and his grandfather with Alzheimer’s.
“I work on computers all day. If I don’t know this exists, my grandparents definitely don’t know,” he said. “And there was just this spark of maybe I could do something about it.”
Scammers had been taking advantage of his grandmother, he learned. She was paying for multiple cable and internet packages. He said “sketchy” people were showing up at her house on her dime, doing unnecessary tasks.
But as Edna, a character modeled after his grandma, he realized he could manipulate the scammers.
“The initial drive or mission was, if I spent 10 minutes on the phone, then that was 10 minutes that that scammer wasn’t talking to my grandma or your grandma,” he said.
Friends encouraged him to stream his calls with scammers on Twitch. Since then, he said he’s helped several victims escape the hold of scammers and disrupted large fraud operations.
Getting back stolen money is rare. But reporting scams to authorities increases your chances
On a good day, Kitboga gathers enough intel from the scammer that he then reports to the authorities. Scammers, seeing him as an unsuspecting victim, will occasionally give up bank account details, cryptocurrency wallet addresses and other identifying information that he said he shares in his reports to banking authorities, in complaints to the FBI, and in direct communications with law enforcement.
“If they think you’re falling for their scams, they end up giving way too much information sometimes,” he said.
The FBI and the Secret Service did not confirm to NPR whether it has agents working with Kitboga or any other scam bait streamers, saying it doesn’t comment on specific activities. The bureau encourages victims to promptly report online scams to its Internet Crime Complaint Center, iC3.gov. The FBI uses those complaints to build cases against cybercriminals. Of the small percentage of overall crimes it does look into, the bureau has a relatively high success rate of stopping scams. Last year, the FBI’s recovery unit was able to freeze roughly 71% of the $758 million stolen in fraud crimes it investigated.
As to how to fight fraud, strategies differ among scam baiters. The ethics of how far to take the trolling are debated in online forums. Some have questioned the murky practices of Pierogi, the alias of another popular streamer in the scambaiting world, who is known for having more of a vigilante streak. Another has faced legal repercussions for his tactics. Thomas Dorsher, who ran the YouTube channel ScammerBlaster to document his efforts in punishing illegal robocallers, was fined by the FCC for running his own illegal robocalling scheme.
Among scam baiters, Kitboga is known for toeing the line: “I kind of treat it like, well, if it’s illegal for me I shouldn’t do it,” he said.
Even so, Jerri Williams, a retired FBI agent, advises scam baiters to be cautious. As a veteran fraud investigator who has worked major telemarketing cases, she said, “I wouldn’t recommend this at all.”
Scam baiters should be cautious as some scammers may do more than defraud people
You don’t always know who’s on the other side of the phone. Although streamers largely target call center scammers who have rudimentary hacking skills, there’s a chance it could be a con artist capable of doxing the scam baiter, Williams said. Some scammers, she added, are not willingly defrauding people, but are victims of human trafficking operations.
“When you’re playing around with people whose job it is to be a criminal, you need to really think about what are you attempting to do,” she said. “If it’s truly just to entertain followers then, no, I don’t think it’s the right thing to do at all.”
For many people who watch Kit’s content, the amusement factor was the Trojan Horse to real information they say helps them stay alert to scams.
Dylon Cai, 40, said he’s a lot wiser to the various scams out there after coming across Kitboga’s channel. Years ago, he was ensnared in a tech support scam that caused him to lose all of his college work on his laptop.
“It was frustrating,” he said. “At that time, YouTube was just starting out. I really wish that somebody was actually able to share this kind of content to me. That would have prevented that experience I had.”
Cindy, who doesn’t want to use her last name due to the threat of scams, said scammers hounded her late parents’ phone line after she became the executor of their estates. A search for answers took her to Kitboga’s Twitch stream.
“I started off trying to find solutions but then I began to love the entertainment portion of it,” she said. “He’s just very addictive to watch and I get a little schadenfreude from seeing [scammers] get their comeuppance.”
Cindy, who at 64 is on the older side of the scam baiter’s predominately millennial viewership, has since joined Kit’s team of volunteers, helping promote his content and keep track of his anti-scam sagas. She said her husband, who doesn’t watch Kit’s content, now looks to her when he’s confronted with suspicious activity online.
“He comes to me, he’s like, ‘What’s this?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s a scam,’ ” she said. “I feel empowered, you know.”
Kit has taken a more proactive approach in his latest schemes, which have allowed him to thwart scammers even while he’s sleeping. He’s set up a “honeypot” trap, created with artificial intelligence, that sends scammers through a series of unending verification steps in search of non-existent stolen Bitcoin accounts.
Recently, he also released anti-scam software. “I’ve seen how devastating they [scams] can be,” Kitboga said, “but also learned — going back to my grandma — how I could stop someone from ever getting on her computer in the first place.”
If you’re struggling to use up leftovers like a half-eaten rotisserie chicken, turn the assignment into a creative exercise, says chef Margaret Li. It’ll make the cooking process more fun and less guilt-driven.
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On a recent weeknight, I opened up my fridge and found an assortment of half-eaten or ignored food.
That included takeout that I didn’t find appetizing enough to eat for lunch. A rotisserie chicken with most of the meat picked off. A couple of raw vegetables from the farmers market that were starting to wilt.
“There’s nothing to eat,” I told myself. Yet even I knew that was ridiculous. There was plenty of food in my fridge. I just didn’t feel inspired to cook with it.
So I asked some chefs for guidance. How could I more consistently use leftovers and the other ingredients I tend to overlook?
Start with a mindset shift, says Margaret Li, chef and co-author of the cookbook Perfectly Good Food: A Totally Achievable Zero Waste Approach to Home Cooking. Think about cooking with leftovers as a creative, experimental exercise, not a guilt-driven one.
“It ends up being this fun game where you are creating something from what seems like nothing and solving this puzzle, and then you get to eat it,” she says.
There are other good reasons to use up your food scraps. Nationally, about a quarter of food products go to waste, according to the nonprofit ReFED. In my own household, where we spend about $200 a week on groceries, that means I might be throwing out the equivalent of $50 of food — an unnecessary burden on my wallet, not to mention the environment.
The chefs I spoke to had some practical tips about using up more of the food we buy. Here are a few that I put to the test.
Find your “hero recipes”
Build up an arsenal of go-to recipes that are flexible enough to use up just about any ingredient. Li calls them “hero recipes.”
I tried one of these from her cookbook, called “Make-It-Your-Own Stir-Fry.” (Scroll down for the recipe.) It includes loose ingredients like “1 pound crisp-crunchy vegetables” or “4 cups leafy greens.”
In the spirit of the recipe, I pulled vegetables out of my fridge at random and did not measure them out. The sauce was a simple mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and water. By the time I topped my bowl with chopped scallions, the dish looked like a gourmet meal, not an afterthought.
Other ideas: “You could put anything in a frittata, and it’ll be great,” says Tamar Adler, chef and author of The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z.
Or, if you have day-old rice on hand, cook it alongside other ingredients to make fried rice. “Saute some aromatics — ginger, garlic, onion — in oil,” Adler says. Then add your rice and whatever leftover bits you have, like the rotisserie chicken and older produce I had in my fridge.
“Just take the approach of making it more flavorful and crispy and then spicy, and then usually adding a squeeze of lemon,” Adler says.
Label your leftovers
Keep a permanent marker and painter’s tape in your kitchen to label and date your leftovers, Li says. “That is a classic chef’s method for knowing what something is and when it was made. That saves you the guessing game.”
Adler takes the concept a step further and labels her leftovers with their intended use. Leftover blueberries are labeled “muffins-to-be on Tuesday,” she says. “I really like doing that — assigning the destiny of the food.”
So after a night of Ethiopian takeout, when we ended up with an entire container of leftover injera, I followed Adler’s advice and thought about what it might become in the future.
I imagined scrambling the spongy, tangy bread with eggs, akin to scrambling matzo into matzo brei. “Injera for eggs,” I wrote on the container. Sure enough, their destiny was fulfilled the following morning.
Li keeps a dedicated bag in her freezer just for scraps from which to make chicken or vegetable stock. That bag houses carrot peels, the ends of onions, extra garlic cloves and chicken bones.
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Don’t forget your odds and ends
Adler encouraged me to never, ever throw away the stems of herbs. Stems don’t get as much glory as tender, pretty leaves, but they still have the same herby taste.
“I’m going to chop these herbs up or stick them in a blender with a clove of garlic,” she says. Then add olive oil. “And then it’s just gonna be my base sauce for everything.”
So I foraged a few varieties of half-cut herbs from my refrigerator drawers, most of them sad looking and unidentifiable.
I threw out the stems that had turned brown and gooey and put the rest in a blender. I added garlic on Adler’s instructions, nuts and kale for bulk, and plenty of olive oil and salt. Then, on a whim, I added a splash of olive juice for brightness.
The result was somewhere between a pesto and a chimichurri, and it elevated that night’s otherwise routine dinner. And Adler was right: Once the stems were blended, it tasted exactly the same as the leaves. (The same idea applies for broccoli stems in a cheesy broccoli soup, Li says.)
Li likes to keep her odds and ends organized with an “Eat Me First” box in her fridge. That’s where she keeps half-used lemons, leftover coconut milk or produce that’s starting to get wrinkly. “You kind of have an idea for, OK, here’s where you look first,” she says.
Don’t strive for perfection
Cooking these meals did feel like a game, as Li had suggested. It brought me unexpected joy to use up as many existing ingredients as possible — to the point where I often spent much longer in the kitchen because I kept thinking of new ideas: If I turn these wrinkly sweet potatoes into a soup, then I can caramelize this half-cut onion for a topping, and then I can use the leftover soup as a sauce tomorrow …
Did I cook more often, though? Probably not. My cooking energy burned brighter but fizzled out after a few nights, at which point I ordered takeout.
So I was glad to hear Li’s take: If you’re too hard on yourself, you’re not going to enjoy it at all. “ I try not to be too obsessive about eating absolutely everything,” she says. If my takeout was truly terrible, I’m allowed to toss it or, better yet, compost it.
If you really want to use up everything, you can always chuck ingredients into the freezer. Li has dedicated freezer bags for different dishes, like vegetable scraps for soups or fruit discards for smoothies. (She labels them, of course.)
And how does that smoothie taste? It’s “delicious,” she says, “even if it’s made up of all the things that have been rejected in the past,” she says.
Recipe: Make-It-Your-Own Stir-Fry
Excerpted from Perfectly Good Food: A Totally Achievable Zero Waste Approach to Home Cooking. Copyright ©2023 by Irene Li and Margaret Li. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Sauce
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon water
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon black vinegar, rice vinegar, lime juice, or other acid
- 1 tablespoon neutral oil, or enough to lightly coat the bottom of your wok or skillet
- 1 garlic clove, thinly sliced or minced, or more as desired
- ½-inch piece fresh ginger, minced or grated (optional)
- Pinch chili flakes or 1 small chile pepper, diced (optional)
- 4 cups leafy greens, torn into bite-size pieces, or 1 pound crisp-crunchy vegetables, cut into chunks
- Kosher salt
Stir the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl and set by the stove.
Heat a wok or large skillet over high heat until just smoking, then add the neutral oil and tilt to coat the bottom of the pan.
Add the garlic, ginger (if using), and chili flakes (if using) and stir-fry for 10 seconds. Add the greens and/or vegetables, in stages as necessary, and toss in the garlicky oil, then add the sauce and cook to your liking, stirring frequently.
Vegetable chunks may need 4 to 7 minutes — if you want to speed up the process, cover the pot so the vegetables steam for a minute or two, then uncover and toss again. Sturdy greens may need 3 to 5 minutes to get tender (we like to let them sit for a bit and char for extra texture).
Lighter leaves will need less than a minute to wilt down. Stir in a spoonful of any additional sauce you like, season with salt to taste, then sprinkle with your favorite garnishes and a generous drizzle of sesame oil.
A sprinkle of crunch is a great way to finish a stir-fry. Our favorites include crushed cashews or peanuts, toasted sesame seeds, thinly sliced scallions, and fried onions or shallots.
Your turn: What are your favorite go-to leftover recipes?
We’d love to hear from you! Share your recipe with us at lifekit@npr.org with your full name. We may publish it on NPR.org.
The story was edited by Malaka Gharib. The visual editor is CJ Riculan. We’d love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at LifeKit@npr.org.
Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and sign up for our newsletter. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekit.
Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks perform onstage during day two of the Boston Calling Music Festival at Boston City Hall Plaza on September 26, 2015 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Mike Lawrie/Getty Images)
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This week’s show was recorded in Chicago with host Peter Sagal, judge and scorekeeper Alzo Slade, Not My Job guest Stephen Malkmus and panelists Emmy Blotnick, Joyelle Nicole Johnson, and Gianmarco Soresi. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.
Who’s Alzo This Time
Pool Problems; Don’t Forget to Hydrate; The Rise of Hot Podium Guy
Panel Questions
TSA Gets A Dressing Down
Bluff The Listener
Our panelists tell three stories about game shows in the news, only one of which is true.
Not My Job: Stephen Malmus, lead singer and guitarist for Pavement, answers our questions about road construction
Indie rock legend and founder of Pavement, Stephen Malkmus, joins us to play a game called, “Pavement repairs are underway!” Three questions about road construction.
Panel Questions
The Battle Over A Home Sale; The Best Three Words To Get Over A Loss and Out of a Meeting?; A New Job in the Dating World
Limericks
Alzo Slade reads three news-related limericks: Good News For Gym Slobs; Cruisin’ For A Tattooin’; Fringe Food Benefits
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All the news we couldn’t fit anywhere else
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Our panelists predict what will find after the reflecting pool is emptied
When Julio Miranda-Martin began his apartment search, he had one nonnegotiable: He wanted a dedicated dining room to entertain his friends. He was scouring Zillow in 2025 when a listing for a railroad-style, one-bedroom on the edge of West Hollywood came up that included the requisite dining room. It was also walking distance to his part-time job as a marketing coordinator at furniture store Lawson-Fenning. More importantly, at $2,500 a month it was within his budget.
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Miranda-Martin met with his landlord the same day he found the listing, who told him he looks like his son. Feeling like finding this 950-square-foot apartment was kismet, Miranda-Martin signed the lease and set about creating a sophisticated and color-saturated sanctuary. Miranda-Martin decided he needed to make two major investments before moving in: painting the walls and changing the lighting. “I was finally able to move into a place that I actually like, not just out of necessity. I was like, let’s make it feel like my own,” says Miranda-Martin, who refers to the space as his “living canvas.”
In this series, we spotlight L.A. rentals with style. From perfect gallery walls to temporary decor hacks, these renters get creative, even in small spaces. And Angelenos need the inspiration: Most are renters.
The apartment is on the second floor of a fourplex, up a windowless staircase. Miranda-Martin embraced the lack of light and painted it a high-gloss crimson. Without natural light, he hard-wired sconces found on Facebook Marketplace that recall ornamental 18th century candlesticks. They cast a dim but moody light throughout the staircase, ending with an ornate mirror at the top. The mirror shows a glimpse of the apartment’s interior in its reflection when Miranda-Martin opens the door. “Every time people walk in, especially at night, it’s such a dramatic entry,” he explains. “It’s very cinematic,” agrees friend and co-worker Kristin Reeder, who is often a guest at his soirees, “like something from ‘Eyes Wide Shut.’ ”
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1. Julio Miranda-Martin’s apartment decor starts in the bold staircase that leads to his door. 2. A mirror at the top of the staircase offers extra depth. 3. Julio Miranda-Martin fills the bookshelf in his dining room with books and treasures.
In contrast, the living room offers a calmer palette of sky blues and earthy browns. Miranda-Martin tends to choose paint colors based on the light. The living room, with abundant west-facing windows brings in soft, bright light. Miranda-Martin painted it with Benjamin Moore’s Navajo, a flat white, as a backdrop to the softer hues of the furniture he designed at his furniture and lighting company, Studio MM. “It adds a stillness,” he says.
The room is anchored by a large velvet couch in a rich brown. The modular couch is anchored on each side with Art-Deco influenced side tables, lamps and light blue slipper chairs he designed, setting up a cozy tableau for hosting his friends. Pale pink cushioned ottomans provide additional seating that can easily be moved around the room to accommodate additional guests.
A velvet couch acts as a statement piece in the apartment living room.
(Etienne Laurent/For the Times)
French doors separate the living room from the dining room. The chartreuse-infused dining room returns to a more dramatic colorway. With less natural light, Miranda-Martin wanted to play up the idea of dining-room-as-treehouse, reflecting the second-floor foliage visible from the small windows. Rather than trying to brighten the room, he leaned into the moodiness by buying inexpensive, USB battery-powered spotlights that are mounted on the ceiling with magnets. Taking an alcohol marker, he tinted the lights a soft amber, allowing him to highlight the art in the room without adding harsh overhead lighting.
The dining room is meant to reflect the foliage just outside the window.
(Etienne Laurent/For the Times)
A shell-adorned mirror anchors the wall facing the windows and built-in shelving, making the room feel larger. Miranda-Martin sourced two shell-shaped sconces that flank the mirror at an estate sale in San Francisco. Most of the art and home decor comes from Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, or is thrifted from local stores. Estate sales are also a source, though Miranda-Martin feels the rising popularity of these sales in Los Angeles has led to an increase in pricing. “They’ve gotten so over the top now in L.A. [They’re] super expensive. You’re not really gonna find a deal,” he laments, citing the armed security checking bags recently at some of the hottest estate sales.
In addition to changing the lighting and painting the walls, Miranda-Martin prioritized the window treatments, with pinch pleat curtains from Ikea. “Drapery can just make a space feel super elevated,” he advises. He prefers a mix of new and vintage decor, balancing both for an eclectic but deeply personal look to his home. He tries not to overthink his aesthetic choices. “I think it’s very instinctual. I’m not really thinking, ‘Is this in good taste or is this going to be weird?,’ ” he says.
Down the hall, the bedroom’s mostly white design theme returns to a more serene composition, providing a quiet sanctuary. Miranda-Martin removed the headboard from his bed, making it seem like it’s floating between the night tables he designed. “Everything feels sort of streamlined and smooth,” says Miranda-Martin. Like the living room, the bedroom is painted the same flat white but the quality of the eastern light filtering into the bedroom casts a buttery glow.
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1. Ceramics fill inset shelves in the kitchen. 2. A glass case in the apartment corridor between the dining room and the bedroom. 3. With its lighter decor, the bedroom was meant to be a sanctuary.
The small kitchen retains its midcentury charm, but open shelving above the counter provides an airier, more contemporary cupboard to show off Miranda-Martin’s dish and glassware collection. The easier access comes in handy when he’s entertaining. His apartment is the perfect pre-game space for him and his friends before a night on the town. He tries to make sure he pre-batches cocktails before his guests arrive.
He also likes to host more elaborate dinner parties and game nights. He attributes his love of entertaining to his upbringing as an only child in Downey. “I like hosting because I enjoy being around more people than when I was growing up,” explains Miranda-Martin. His goal, ultimately, is to bring together disparate groups of people from different spheres in a space everyone will feel comfortable in. Dinner parties at Miranda-Martin’s “feel like an event,” says Reeder. “It’s something you’re excited for and you want to get dressed up for.”
“I’m kind of going through a phase right now where I need to be around people,” admits Miranda-Martin. “I think I just hate being alone.”
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