A YouTuber with over 90,000 subscribers is giving scammers a taste of their own medicine by exposing them on camera after posing as a vulnerable grandmother. "Neld Harris", the pseudonym of the content creator behind the ScamSandwich YouTube channel, has built a career on exposing online scammers. His YouTube channel contains dozens of his scam-the-scammers videos, which have garnered millions of views and likes on the platform. He has also generated tens of thousands of subscribers since he went online in January 2023, the New York Post reported.
The YouTuber poses as Neld, an 80-year-old widow from Dallas, who plays along with elaborate scammers' attempts to take over her computer, install malware and convince her to give them money. "I make surrealist phone calls to scammers to bait them into ridiculous situations using voice mods [voice-altering software], fake banks, and fake gift card redeems," the content creator who is apparently in his 30s said, as per the Post.
The YouTuber revealed that he finds the scammers by Googling phrases like "Zelle support" and calling their 1-800 numbers, or sometimes they contact "Neld", thinking they are targeting an old woman.
In his videos, he is often asked by the scammers to go to a CVS or Walmart and purchase gift cards worth thousands of dollars. He fakes doing all this and then sends the scammers the details. The YouTuber also keeps them online for hours at a time, playing along with their scams. He drives them crazy by responding slowly and stupidly to their demands. "Neld" said that the scammers usually pretend to be American or Mexican, with names such as Thomas Wayne and Brian Collins.
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"He's worn down some to the point of tears, swearing they will give up their criminality and go straight if he'd only leave them alone," a "Neld" insider told The Post. "But that usually happens only after he's actually hacked their computers and downloaded or destroyed all of their data by installing a very dangerous computer virus on the scammers' computers, gained control of their webcams and livestreamed video of them to the world, embarrassing them publicly and threatening to contact their innocent families, revealing their criminal acts," they added.
"He's brilliant and has a truly dark sense of humor. While he won't discuss it, he does report some of his investigations to authorities in the US and in India, in hopes authorities will make arrests," the source said.
The YouTuber usually takes over the scammers' webcams and reveals to the scammers that he "knows precisely where they are working from, frequently in Indian cities, and sometimes in West African countries". He also tells them that he can see their group chats, and even in one case a scammer sliding into a woman's direct messages (DMs). He then unleashes powerful viruses on their computers, ruining their ability to scam people.
Notably, the Post reported that the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) warned last year that Americans over 60 were scammed of $28.3 billion every year, with just 1 in 10 of the scams reported to authorities.
