S/O Beggars, Moochers and Scammers

[ladyknight1]

My youngest sister, hereafter known as Leech, is the champion "must be nice" person. She works as a server in a restaurant, as she has for the past 14 years. The area where she is operates primarily on cash, so the tips get in her pocket the same day, and spent after work. At the end of the week, when she needs to buy groceries or pay bills, there is nothing left. She doesn't understand the connection there.

She just bought the newest Samsung phone, buys new purses weekly, eats out nearly every meal, etc. She is jealous that we have annual passes for Disney World, go on a few weekend trips a year, week long vacations, and that we don't have to borrow money from others to pay our bills.

[Shea]

We used to get the "fresh meat" guy. A few summers ago, he knocked on the door in the middle of dinner and I answered. He did his spiel (through the screen door) and I told him we weren't interested because we were vegetarians. I then took a big bite of my hot dog and looked him in the eye.
He hasn't been back since.

Genius. 

My mother once ran off some religious proselytizers by telling them we were Jewish. At Christmas, with a wreath on the door and the Christmas tree clearly visible from the front door. 

ETA: not that religious door-to-door types are necessarily a scam (I imagine a few are are, but I'm sure most are sincere), but these guys absolutely would not take "We're not interested, have a good day" for an answer. Very irritating and rude.

[jedikaiti]

Got some new good ones recently. My new "friend" (boyfriend's friend's wife, we pretty much go in the same circles) nannies children for a living, but in an area that's not near where my sister or her child's father live. My sister has a kid, but isn't in charge of childcare, the Sproglet's father does that. Also, New Friend (NF) has taken on other kids recently in her job.

NF wanted/needed a new carseat. Sis said she'd ask around, as she knew some people who had kids who were growing out of theirs. Well, the one person she asked would have been willing to part with it, except her sister just found out she's pregnant with twins, so now she's saving it for her sister.

NF is apparently mad at my sister (whom she's met only two or three times) because my sister promised her a carseat and then took it back. Also, because she's such a close family friend to me, she should get first crack at watching Sproglet. Except she can't drive to pick Sproglet up, and nobody can get her up to NF's place and still get to work on time. But she still expects Sis to go to her first and only weigh other options after she's tried her out.

That is one Special Snowflake!

[jedikaiti]

Mine was used once for a child's movie ticket in Texas, purchased online. Small purchases, and using them online or at a gas pump are very common ways to test out the usability of a newly-stolen card or card #, I believe.

I imagine it going down a bit like this:
Steal a credit card, use it at a gas pump to put gas in your car.
A few days later, the local police (with full cooperation fom the gas station's owners) determine that the card in question was used at pump 3 at 2:13am.  Security cameras show a green Chevy with license plate 123-XYZ filling up at Pump 7 from 2:11 until 2:14am.

Police officer gets into his car, runs the plate and determines that the car is registered to Mr. John Doe at 123 Mainstreet, just a couple blocks from the station.  Officers goes to Mr. Doe's house and learns from Mr. Doe that Jack Doe (John's 17-year-old son) had the car that night and didn't get home until about 2:30am.  Mr. Doe says his son has been out of control lately and allows Officer to search Jack's room where the stolen credit card is located along with several different types of illicit drugs, fake IDs, and other stolen property.

Jack Doe returns home from another day of skipping school to find his father and a couple police officers waiting in the living room.

There's also this scenario:

Scammer Joe acquires a wallet that is not his, and decides to go shopping. To make sure his new credit cards haven't already been reported lost/stolen, he acquires a car which is also not his, and runs to a gas station to fill it up. The card is rejected, so he just takes off, tosses the wallet somewhere, and ditches the car. Since he was using pay at the pump, there's no potential embarassment (or human eyewitnesses), and his hat obscured his face from the security cameras.

[MrTango]

Mine was used once for a child's movie ticket in Texas, purchased online. Small purchases, and using them online or at a gas pump are very common ways to test out the usability of a newly-stolen card or card #, I believe.

I imagine it going down a bit like this:
Steal a credit card, use it at a gas pump to put gas in your car.
A few days later, the local police (with full cooperation fom the gas station's owners) determine that the card in question was used at pump 3 at 2:13am.  Security cameras show a green Chevy with license plate 123-XYZ filling up at Pump 7 from 2:11 until 2:14am.

Police officer gets into his car, runs the plate and determines that the car is registered to Mr. John Doe at 123 Mainstreet, just a couple blocks from the station.  Officers goes to Mr. Doe's house and learns from Mr. Doe that Jack Doe (John's 17-year-old son) had the car that night and didn't get home until about 2:30am.  Mr. Doe says his son has been out of control lately and allows Officer to search Jack's room where the stolen credit card is located along with several different types of illicit drugs, fake IDs, and other stolen property.

Jack Doe returns home from another day of skipping school to find his father and a couple police officers waiting in the living room.

There's also this scenario:

Scammer Joe acquires a wallet that is not his, and decides to go shopping. To make sure his new credit cards haven't already been reported lost/stolen, he acquires a car which is also not his, and runs to a gas station to fill it up. The card is rejected, so he just takes off, tosses the wallet somewhere, and ditches the car. Since he was using pay at the pump, there's no potential embarassment (or human eyewitnesses), and his hat obscured his face from the security cameras.

That happens too.  Sometimes, they're even smart enough to wear gloves so as to not leave fingerprints all over the car.

[dawbs]

Mine was used once for a child's movie ticket in Texas, purchased online. Small purchases, and using them online or at a gas pump are very common ways to test out the usability of a newly-stolen card or card #, I believe.

I imagine it going down a bit like this:
Steal a credit card, use it at a gas pump to put gas in your car.
A few days later, the local police (with full cooperation fom the gas station's owners) determine that the card in question was used at pump 3 at 2:13am.  Security cameras show a green Chevy with license plate 123-XYZ filling up at Pump 7 from 2:11 until 2:14am.

Police officer gets into his car, runs the plate and determines that the car is registered to Mr. John Doe at 123 Mainstreet, just a couple blocks from the station.  Officers goes to Mr. Doe's house and learns from Mr. Doe that Jack Doe (John's 17-year-old son) had the car that night and didn't get home until about 2:30am.  Mr. Doe says his son has been out of control lately and allows Officer to search Jack's room where the stolen credit card is located along with several different types of illicit drugs, fake IDs, and other stolen property.

Jack Doe returns home from another day of skipping school to find his father and a couple police officers waiting in the living room.

There's also this scenario:

Scammer Joe acquires a wallet that is not his, and decides to go shopping. To make sure his new credit cards haven't already been reported lost/stolen, he acquires a car which is also not his, and runs to a gas station to fill it up. The card is rejected, so he just takes off, tosses the wallet somewhere, and ditches the car. Since he was using pay at the pump, there's no potential embarassment (or human eyewitnesses), and his hat obscured his face from the security cameras.

Last time we had one stolen, it looked more like this:

Scammer Joe steals a number from somewhere.
Scammer Joe orders and has DELIVERED to an address (other side of the country from me), $500 worth of specialty food. 

Scam-me finds fraudulent charges and gives all of the information, INCLUDING where the food was delivered to, a contact # for the restaurant folks who were scammed (who are itching to press charges and recoup) and a possible name of the scammer to the CC company, the local PD in our area and the PD in the area where the scam took place.
And all of those people threw out the information because, red tape/it's easier just to eat the loss.

[Momiitz]

I encountered a scammer at the grocery store this morning. An older lady in a store owned electric scooter came up to me and asked me for help.  I thought maybe she needed help getting something off one of the high shelves.

She asked me how I was going to pay for my groceries. I told her with money I saved in my bank account. She was trying to tell me some story but at that point didn't even listen to what she was saying.  She wanted to pay for my groceries with her debit card and then I could give her cash for the groceries.  Of course I had heard of this scam before. She was going to pay for my groceries with her food stamps card and I was to give her cash so could spend it on nonfood items.

I told her no thanks I'm not interested in doing that. She gave me a look and said "its the same thing." She left me alone after that. I went and told the store manager to let him know about this lady and her scam. The look he gave me when I told him let me know that she's tried this before at the store. He told me that what she was doing was illegal and they would take care of it right away.

They must have threatened her with calling the police because she was gone very quickly and was not waiting outside or anything which I worried about.

[MommyPenguin]

Our credit card numbers have been stolen a few times.  Several times the credit card company has called to tell us that they had some sort of leak and a bunch of credit card numbers were compromised, so we wouldn't be able to use our card and would get a new one.  <sigh>  I hate when that happens, as then we have to memorize a new number.  And they've done it like 2-3 times, too!  Other times they call our home phone number to verify charges.  Most of the times, it's just weird purchases we've made (yes, we really did spend a thousand dollars at the LEGO store, doesn't everybody?).  Or weird purchasing habits, like the time I went to the grocery store (that is like a Super Walmart, so tons of non-grocery items).  I wanted to buy a baby pool for the kids.  But it was too big to carry around while getting groceries, so I paid for it, took it out to my car, then came back to buy groceries.  Having a small purchase ($7 or so?) and then trying to make a larger purchase at the same store was a trigger, so my card was declined.  However, they did once call because somebody tried to book an airline ticket with the airline of the United Arab Emirates... that one definitely was stolen. 

[jedikaiti]

Our credit card numbers have been stolen a few times.  Several times the credit card company has called to tell us that they had some sort of leak and a bunch of credit card numbers were compromised, so we wouldn't be able to use our card and would get a new one.  <sigh>  I hate when that happens, as then we have to memorize a new number.  And they've done it like 2-3 times, too!  Other times they call our home phone number to verify charges.  Most of the times, it's just weird purchases we've made (yes, we really did spend a thousand dollars at the LEGO store, doesn't everybody?).  Or weird purchasing habits, like the time I went to the grocery store (that is like a Super Walmart, so tons of non-grocery items).  I wanted to buy a baby pool for the kids.  But it was too big to carry around while getting groceries, so I paid for it, took it out to my car, then came back to buy groceries.  Having a small purchase ($7 or so?) and then trying to make a larger purchase at the same store was a trigger, so my card was declined.  However, they did once call because somebody tried to book an airline ticket with the airline of the United Arab Emirates... that one definitely was stolen. 

If you have a card from an issuer that's had MULTIPLE in-house security problems like that, I suggest finding a new bank. OTOH, the only time I've gotten that sort of warning from a bank, they were actually passing on a warning of a possible compromise from a 3rd party that they would not name. So think Favorite Online Shopping Site had a breach, bunch of CC#s may have been stolen, so they notify the card companies so the (now anonymous) warnings to the consumers. That's annoying, but not the bank's fault.

[MommyPenguin]

We did actually get a new card, although not because of the card losses, just because we found another with rewards that worked better for us.  I do still have the original card, though, but I don't use it except in a pinch (like the other night when I needed gas during a long car trip and it wouldn't take my regular card).  At least they haven't had any number losses since then.

[LadyMisha]

About a month ago, my DD and I were heading to Charlotte because my mom had fallen and broken her hip.  We stopped at a local gas station to fill up prior to getting on the interstate and a mini-van (about a decade worth of model years newer than my DD's car) pulled up to the pump in front of us so we were nose to nose.  A woman got out, dressed in a very nice suede trench coat.  She came up to me as I was pumping gas and told me that she was almost out of gas, riding on fumes really, and wanted to know if I could help her out with some cash.  I told her I was very sorry, but that we were headed out of town on a family emergency and that I needed to reserve my cash until I was sure of what was happening. 

At that point, she said ok, got back into her mini-van and took off like a bat out of Hades.  I remember standing there, open mouthed and staring at her retreating bumper, wondering why on earth she would say she was running on fumes.  Anyone who gunned the gas like that on fumes would not have made it across the parking lot! 

My DD had heard her ask, so when I got back in the car, we both kind of looked at each other like, Did that really just happen???  Wow. 

Made me kind of glad I didn't have any funds to spare right then.  I'm usually a sucker for that kind of stuff.

[Hillia]

DS got rid of a persistent religious proselityzer who just would not let it go by saying, 'It doesn't matter, I'm g*ay so I'm going to hell anyway' and making his escape while the other guy picked his chin up off the ground.

My BIL is a great 'must be nice'-er.  His favorite thing is to wait til Dec 23 to even think about Christmas gifts for his family, then moan and wail about how horrible everything is, and how it 'must be nice' that people in his office can kick in $10 each for a party when he can eeeeeeeven affort Christmas presents for his parents.  Meantime he's bought 3 new guns, a new car stereo, refuses to pack a lunch for work, etc - all the while living with his parents so he doesn't pay any rent/groceries/utilities. This year DH and I would like to get his folks a nice smart TV for Christmas; they don't get cable in their area but can stream Netflix, so they would enjoy it I think.  I'm getting ready to ask BIL if he'd like to contribute to it so he has plenty of time to put aside a few dollars; the wails of outrage are already ringing in my ears.

[Kaymyth]

Mine was used once for a child's movie ticket in Texas, purchased online. Small purchases, and using them online or at a gas pump are very common ways to test out the usability of a newly-stolen card or card #, I believe.

I imagine it going down a bit like this:
Steal a credit card, use it at a gas pump to put gas in your car.
A few days later, the local police (with full cooperation fom the gas station's owners) determine that the card in question was used at pump 3 at 2:13am.  Security cameras show a green Chevy with license plate 123-XYZ filling up at Pump 7 from 2:11 until 2:14am.

Police officer gets into his car, runs the plate and determines that the car is registered to Mr. John Doe at 123 Mainstreet, just a couple blocks from the station.  Officers goes to Mr. Doe's house and learns from Mr. Doe that Jack Doe (John's 17-year-old son) had the car that night and didn't get home until about 2:30am.  Mr. Doe says his son has been out of control lately and allows Officer to search Jack's room where the stolen credit card is located along with several different types of illicit drugs, fake IDs, and other stolen property.

Jack Doe returns home from another day of skipping school to find his father and a couple police officers waiting in the living room.

Fun fact:  for larger commercial gas stations that are all prepay/pay at the pump with no risk of a drive-off, their security cameras aren't pointed at the pump.

When my credit card was stolen, it wasn't the gas station purchases that got the thief - it was the Wal-Mart surveillance video.