I stumbled across the concept of scam-baiting a few months ago, I think on somebodies weblog, can’t remember which one so if this is you let me know and I will reference you here, and I found the whole idea very appealing, of course because it winds up those who send spam in the first place but also because it creates the opportunity to fabricate an event or type of online performance as art, documented through the traces / paper trails (not necessarily literally) / relics it leaves behind. Conceptual art did this a lot to highlight the importance of idea and process in art and move the emphasis away from a finished art object / commodity.

419eater seems to have the best traces / paper trails / relics of some of the more interesting scam-baits on the topic of art itself. Now these are not for those who hate reading online and require more than the 15 seconds or so that users often give to online works but are well worth the time required. Two of the ones I have managed to completely read through include Carving for Cash (image above) where the scam-baiter, Derek Trotter, Roy Slater and finally Rodney Trotter (Characters from one of Englands most famous comedies, Only Fools and Horses, about notorious shady dealers the Trotters) convince a Nigerian scammer to commission a sculpture and post it to England in order to compete for an art scholarship and
The Incredible Shrinking Artwork (image below) a similar scam-bait for a sculpture where all goes wrong due to the temperature and humidity fluctuations between Europe and West Africa.

A complete list of scam-baits can be found here on the 419eater website.