That's wrong. Every minute spent interacting with a fake lead is a minute lost with a real scam victim.
The answer is to "reply" from a throwaway email account. That keeps your real email off active target lists. No spammer uses unique reply-to emails per recipient, so there's no trace back to your original email address. That requires brains for them to setup.
Yes, I do that with phone spam, at least the calls that aren't blocked. I always press the “speak with a human” key, and then keep talking to the person until they hang up on me (they always do). I'm retired, so my time doesn't cost anything, and doing this makes their day's work a little less productive. Seems like a good trade-off to me.
The answer is to "reply" from a throwaway email account. That keeps your real email off active target lists. No spammer uses unique reply-to emails per recipient, so there's no trace back to your original email address. That requires brains for them to setup.