S/O Beggars, Moochers and Scammers

[Jones]

In high school there was a group of girls that I am quite sure were not lacking in money. They had professionally cut and dyed hair, manicures, and new dresses every dance. This was not common at my school, where girls would dye each other's hair with drugstore dye and rewear each other's dresses. So, these girls and I had a gym class together. I overheard them one day muttering and figuring up how much money they could get if they asked everyone in the school for a quarter "for the pay phone." Cell phones existed at this point in time, but the high school had a couple of pay phones for student use, presumably to keep them from begging teachers during class time.

Shortly after I overheard this the girls approached me asking for a quarter so they could call a parent for (can't remember the excuse). I refused. They asked some other girls in class, one at a time, separate from each other, I only noticed because I was watching them. The first few gave the rest caught on and refused too. Cue flashing eyes and angry name calling.

I noticed some young men giving them quarters between classes later that day *sigh*. I doubt they made the $350~ they were shooting for, but they did make something.

[Pippen]

I used to get phone calls at work from people saying they were calling on behalf of the local Lions club and they wanted me to sponsor a disadvantaged child to go to the movies or a magic show at a cost of $40. Now considering a childs movie ticket is around $7 and some popcorn and a drink another maybe $6 that seemed a bit steep. It took and epic amount of googling to get to the bottom of this and find the company behind it. Yes they were associated with the Lions. Basically the would solicit donations from local business collect maybe $25,000 give the Lions a 'donation' of around $5,000 for using their trusted brand and pocket the rest after paying the discounted cost of the services. Often these events never even took place. The Lions got a donation they wouldn't have had otherwise so kept stumm and the owner of this entertainment company makes millions while the donors think it is going to a good cause. If you call the company director getting a new Porsche a good cause.

[Firecat]

I've gotten the fake toner calls back when I was an admin assistant. I usually just said "no thanks" and hung up.

But a couple of years ago, some guy tried a scam on my parents, probably one aimed mostly at the elderly. He called and wanted to sell them "computer cleanup" software because, he claimed, that he could see their banking information from their computer.

To which Mom replied: "Wow, you must be really good. Because we don't have any banking information on there." Then she hung up. They haven't called back as far as I know.

[heartmug]

Last time I got one of those, I tried something I had read about here on eHell 

Her: "I'm about to send your toner order but could you please verify the serial number on your printer?"
Me: "Sure, let me go check.  One second.  Here it is: 4."
Her: "No, that's not it - should be a longer number than that."
Me: "Nope, that's the serial number - this printer is very old."
Her: " . . ."
Me: "Yeah, not falling for it, sorry.  Goodbye.  *click*"

LOL!  I got  that call at work, years ago, when I had to fill in for the receptionist.  I just said "You should know the number."

[Sirius]

I didn't realize my ex-BIL got around so much.

When X and Younger Sis were married I invited them to my house for dinner at a town 25 miles from where they lived.  They came to dinner, and we all had a good time.  Then X told me that because I'd invited them to dinner I owed them gas money to get back home.  I told X, "I'll give you gas money if you rake my yard.  To my specifications." 

After the yard inspection I took them over to the local station and filled their car up and my own car up with gas and put it on a credit card.  He got quite upset that I didn't hand over cash and asked me, "Don't you trust me?"  I looked him right in the eye and said, "Quite frankly, no." 

That was one of the more minor incidents.  I can't say that I was sad when my sister divorced him. 

And Slartibartfast:  Take the good advice from the others and rescind your invitation.  I agree with Amara 1000%.

[The Lunchlady]

DH and I have been fortunate to have never been scammed, but DH has a work mate that is currently dealing with being scammed.

DH and this mate work all over the country and share a hotel. This mate started chatting on a scrabble site with a young woman in a foreign country who gave him a story about being an orphaned American citizen, living on the generosity and sufferance of relatives in that country and wanted to come back to the US. Work mate sent her a large sum of money to cover airfare to the US. They had planned to start a life together. She never made it.

She contacted him again with the story that she had been arrested and was being held on trumped up charges. Mate sent money because he knew that this poor girl was a decent person (or talked a great game of scrabble). He didn’t hear from her for a while, DH said mate was somewhat despondent over her plight.

Her next contact with him involved her being in an accident, had no insurance and needed bones set at a hospital; again money was sent.

All this was unknown to DH until the last remittance was sent, when the work mate confided what had been going on as far as the loss of several thousand dollars and now the young woman won’t talk to him. DH mentioned that mate has been scammed. The work mate went to the authorities to report and was told because it was international; there was little they could do to help.

Work mate is depressed that someone he thought cared about him has played him for a fool, and DH fears he is suicidal.

The kicker? Work mate must now explain to his wife the loss of several thousand dollars from his their account.

[kherbert05]

Just last year, I answered a call for the Printer Scam at work.  Many years ago, our office manager was the victim of the very same scam, so I had some familiarity with the way it went.  Snopes explains it here:

http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/supplies.asp

There are several variations but this particular scam is if you give the model number off the printer in question, you are either given a hard sell for really crappy but expensive toner or find yourself receiving a large case of very poor quality toner you never ordered, accompanied by a very expensive invoice.  The payoff is that they hope the invoice will just get paid to avoid litigation. 


Some BG:  I'm an assistant but I work at a pretty large company.  While we order supplies like pens, folders, note pads, etc., we have a person whose job is to maintain the printer/copier/fax machines we have.  I am not that person.  Anyone who does such business with our company would know that I am not that person.

So my phone rang.  Most of the time we have a caller ID display but this one was marked "PR-1," which means private.  My primary client's number occasionally comes up private, so I picked it up and answered with my customary greeting of "Company Name, this is 2LM." 

It's Tony and he says something like,

Tony: "Hey 2LM!  Listen, I was getting ready to send out your toner order but I wanted to make sure I had the right one.  Can you run over and get me the model number printer?"  (DING DING DING go the warning bells, LOL.)

Me: "Sir, I'm afraid I haven't ordered any toner and I'm not the person in charge of such things.  Good bye."

I was 99.999% sure it was a scam and had no intention of feeding this guy our real printer guy's name or number.  I let the Keeper of the Printer know about the call on the off chance he really did have a pending order and the guy just mis-dialed.  He didn't so I alerted my team to make them aware.  I have no idea how this guy got my extension.

Random Dialing* could be how he got your extension.


I had the same scam call the museum while the guy that serviced our copier for free (in kind donation) and a San Angelo cop were in the office. We had fun with him.


*Sis used this to restore internet to her neighborhood. After Allison flooded Houston, no one in Sis's street had working internet. When they called in the problem the Time Warner people insisted the internet was working fine and the problem was the customers computers.


Sis used this tactic to  leave messages at the local corporate offices (after she tricked someone into giving her the corporate number) Basically she threatened to get the neighborhood a deal with the competion, including offering to appear in an ad saying that all 20+ families had switched because of bad customer service.


The neighborhood was full of Time Warner techs the next day and evening. Turns out that several pieces of equipment were damaged during the flooding.

[Snooks]

The kicker? Work mate must now explain to his wife the loss of several thousand dollars from his their account.

Ouch, that's not going to be a fun conversation.

I've got a lot more cautious about the internet as I've got older, when I was younger I believed everyone was what they said they were and for the most part I still think that's true however I'd never hand out cash to someone.

At the moment on another site people just sent nearly $500 to someone's sister who found herself in a bind.  I believe that they're genuine but it blows my mind that people will send money via paypal with no way of knowing where that money is actually going.  Maybe those people are just more charitable than me.

[Piratelvr1121]

I remember, at my grandmother's funeral, her eldest son (well Uncle J is 5 minutes older than my dad) was giving the eulogy and spoke of how they had been looking over her accounts after she passed and found out that she'd been donating money to anyone who asked her for it.  Usually by phone, I'm guessing, since she lived in an assisted living facility and I would sure hope they wouldn't let anyone in who was going to coax money from the elderly residents.

Anyway, my grandmother had Alzheimer's, and my uncle joked that they knew that her memory was bad when they found out she'd contributed to the opposite political party than the one she'd been a part of all her life.

But I have heard of people who do target the elderly for money. 

[rose red]

This isn't as major or tragic as a lot of stories, but I have a relative who works with a very well known moocher and I have met her too.  She moans and groans that she has no money for lunch, but somehow shows up with the latest gadgets and designers purses  .  She's "that person" who filches your snacks right off your desk in front of you without asking.  One story is that she pulled the pity act on my relative who gave her a few dollars to buy fast food lunch.  Later, another coworker asked Moocher if she had change for a $5.  Moocher pulled out a wallet full of money.  She works harder to get out of work than it would to actually work.

The whole office treats her and her act as entertainment now.  Her reputation for this and other behaviors is totally ruined in the whole building (not just her department), but she is still clueless as how she is seen to others.  The sad part is she truly believe she's entitled to other people's money and things.  If you stumble upon good fortune, she thinks she is entitled to part or all of it.  Scary.

[Amara]

Why do people cater to her, Rose Red? Or treat her as entertainment? I don't understand.

[Outdoor Girl]

I think there should be an especially hot place in hell reserved for scammers who prey on the elderly.  My Dad needed new windows.  He paid a deposit to a company that was supposedly affiliated with another company.  And then no windows ever materialized.  But what this scammer didn't count on was that my Dad was friendly with one of the local police detectives.  So he went to see her and she tried to get my Dad's money back.  And when that wasn't forthcoming, she pursued charges against him.  My Dad never did get his money back but the guy did significant jail time.

ETA:  Dad went to court the day he was sentanced.  There were several victims of this guy, including scammer's own church!

[Pippen]

I think there should be an especially hot place in hell reserved for scammers who prey on the elderly.  My Dad needed new windows.  He paid a deposit to a company that was supposedly affiliated with another company.  And then no windows ever materialized.  But what this scammer didn't count on was that my Dad was friendly with one of the local police detectives.  So he went to see her and she tried to get my Dad's money back.  And when that wasn't forthcoming, she pursued charges against him.  My Dad never did get his money back but the guy did significant jail time.

ETA:  Dad went to court the day he was sentanced.  There were several victims of this guy, including scammer's own church!

Was it for double glazing? When I lived in the UK apparently there was something very dodgy about the industry.

[AreaWoman]

I saw a repeat scammer yesterday driving home from work.  There is a guy who walks around to cars in traffic, claiming that he works for some company (don't remember which one; probably changes) and says that his work vehicle ran out of gas and his company requires him to refill it.  So he just needs some cash to get back to the company depot and get the person reimbursed.  He looks pretty convincing, too, as he is wearing some vaguely-branded polo and has a walkie-talkie on one hip and key fob/cards on the other.  Of course, this has seemed to happen to him at least three times that I can recall, and that work vehicle is no where to be found...

And fun spell-check fact -- it tries to change "scammer" to "scummier."  How appropriate.

[lilfox]

The funniest scam someone tried against me was a guy I met on a plane.  This was a) before 9/11 and b) when flights were less than half full and moving seats wasn't an issue.  I noticed him because he was good looking, and was flattered when he chose the empty seat next to me (after asking if I minded company).  So we chatted, which meant mostly he would say things like "You're really interesting, I want to know this and that about you" and then proceed to talk about himself at length.     It was amusing, but it definitely made me switch from thinking ooh cute guy! to wow so conceited.  As it happens, he was on his way to a motocross competition, but his day job was something involving fancy sports cars.  And as dumb luck would have it, when he dropped his latest sports car off, he had left his wallet in the glove compartment, with his driver's license and credit cards and cash.  How unfortunate!

(I recall wondering how he got on the flight without ID, but I didn't ask him and it was before 9/11 so it's possible they still accepted other forms of ID than driver's license.)

So he spends the last half hour of the flight dropping hints about how tough it was going to be for him to get to his motocross event 2 hours away without a rental car...  or a ride from a kind stranger...  After we landed, he kept up the hard sell and I, ever the problem solver, suggested he go to the police office in the airport to get a copy of his license but that wouldn't work, for some reason.  He wandered off and that was the last I saw of him.

Until he showed up at the car rental place shortly after I did, with a new girl in tow.  He told me proudly how she, kind stranger that she was, was going to rent a car for him!  Oh my.  All I could think was about how he had wasted 2 hours on me for nothing, and managed to find a new mark *and* get her to rent him a car in less than 10 minutes.