Rinoa Poison is an American YouTuber and Twitch streamer whose content revolves around scambaiting. She engages with refund scammers, IRS scammers, SSA scammers, DirecTV scammers and others. Most scammers she calls are from India, but some are from Nigeria, and more recently Morocco. Most of her characters are depicted as misunderstanding computers and gift cards.
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Her characters also include Store Manager, Bob, who is vigilant about putting scammers in their place, often asking 'Whaddya dooin', Bro?!', Margaret, who calls everyone 'deahhh', Sherry who is buying a webcam to talk to the lovely young men she seems to encounter over the telephone and the young ladies - Jessica whose well-intentioned efforts to put things right when she's inadvertently given too much of a refund go badly wrong - and the sassy Nancy, who is pretty good at telling scammers how to behave.
Rinoa has multiple catchphrases and rambling improvised stories which go off on alarming tangents. In the past, Rinoa's characters have been interrupted by her pets, Shakey the inappropriate parrot and Mittens who won't get off the keyboard. Her skills at improv are widely admired and elicit the strangest responses from those trying to scam her characters.
Rinoa's followers are lively and the collective noun 'Melons' inspired her FB page, Melonbuddies. Melons get together on Monday-Thursday on streaming platform Twitch for live interaction and the edited videos go into YouTube for a live premiere every Friday at 3pm (EST/EDT). Occasionally there have been additional Sunday premieres.
Notable videos include Episode 23, where Rinoa begins the saga of Mark (12/29/20). Margaret speaks to scammer 'Mark Beets' and speaks of husband Richard and grandson Billy. The episode contains references to HotWheels, iTunes, Amazon Scammers, Mark's marriage to Linda which lasted three years - it ended badly, she was sex mad. She worked at the Better Business Bureau and he recalled he had met on rainy day in high school. Using Teamviewer, $500 Target cards, Burger King (gross), and (Depends) accident. The introduction of 'Have I told you about the Melon card' scenario. Some very bad taste photoshopped greetings cards.
As of August 26 2021, Rinoa holds the unofficial record for keeping an individual (Max Robertson-Silverhammer) on the phone for a total of 65Hrs 35Min 20Sec without revealing they were being baited, knocking scammer 'Steve-O' and his imaginary abusive grandfather into second place with a mere 39 hours. This individual is, at the time of writing, still on the hook. Sherry removes her pants to go into stealth mode while at the bank attempting transfers to Thailand. Eventually Max brings his sister/(wife?), Jenny into the scam to attempt to appeal to Sherry's feminine side. Jenny fails and begins to sweet talk Rinoa's character Nicholas the bank employee in the hope of rushing a transaction through. Canadian scambaiter and sometime collaborator DeyO shouting 'it burns' in the background of a scene involving mayonnaise may need to be seen to be believed.
History of the Melon: Margaret goes to buy gift cards, but mistakes what is meant by 'card' and is waylaid at the greeting card section. One particular card featuring the fruit makes a pun on being 'one in a melon' which she finds cute and prompts her to ask 'have you heard the one about the Melon?'. Without fail, the repetition of the question drives money-hungry scammers into apoplexy.
Shakey: Parrot who interrupts conversations with inappropriate comments, played by Rinoa, and Mittens: plaintive miouws also voiced by Rinoa.
Breakdown of a typical bait: Scammer calls asking her if she is aware that they are going out of business and need to refund her a charge for computer maintenance. Scammer uses screen sharing to connect to her fake bank account and manipulate it to make it look like he is transferring a nominal amount back. Somehow, inexplicably, he will fake transfer a much larger amount into her account and then ask her to buy him some gift cards to pay the company back or he will lose his job at Microsoft or wherever he is pretending to be calling from. At this point Rinoa will go on an odyssey of calamitous happenings until the scammer uses every inch of his patience attempting to extract money from her. He is never able to, despite his best efforts and all his ingenuity. Often, the scammer lets slip lots of information about his call-center's operation and bank accounts. The hours fly by for all concerned with the exception of the scammer who has serious doubts about his choice of career. Every adventure is different, and exposes the level of persistence the call-centers in extracting the savings of their preferred victims, usually elderly women.
Result: Lots of time wasted and the chat are fully engaged with the twists and turns of the bait.
Rinoa also reports scammers' bank accounts and money mule information to the proper authorities. You don't see what goes on behind the scenes to pursue the criminals who run these scams.