i seem to be the odd one out on this thread. i just give people five bucks and move on.
people don’t generally enjoy asking for money, so if they’re asking – i generally give some. who cares if they’re lying about the reason. it’s not like i’m even hitting 20 bucks out of my pocket a month doing it.
multiple people have used “scam” like this here – but just lying about why a person needs money doesn’t seem like it rises to that level.
a scam is when you pay something out expecting to get something of value back – and don’t.
if you’re just giving away money – then you’re just giving away money.
the only thing that annoys me personally is when the same guy on multiple days is claiming to have run out of gas again – or even worse, asking me for money twice in the same day, like minutes apart.
just try to remember me for two seconds is all i ask.
When I lived in Kansas City a friend and I walked the same path every day and were approached by the same woman saying that her kid was hungry in the car just down the block and she needed gas money to get home. We gave her a few bucks on the first day. After about a month of the same story my friend turned to the lady and told the woman that if she hasn’t raised gas money after a month her kid probably isn’t there anymore. She at least moved to a different spot after that.
This is so common. In the version I experienced, an attractive, well-dressed woman asked for $50 for gas for her trip home. Instead of offering me a gold ring, she offered to have sex with me, right in her car!
I fell for her scam four times last week, and I’m planning to fall for it this weekend as well!
I think this was in Nashville, but it might have been some other city. I was on a work trip for a conference. During the afternoon free time, I walked to a grocery store a couple blocks away. Once I left, an older scruffy looking dude walked up to me and asked for some money to buy soup. My gut instinct was positive, so I gave him the $5 bill I had in my pocket. I had just seen that a bowl of soup was $3.50 and it sure did smell good.
Some of the other folks at the conference were apparently a little way off, and saw what happened. They were worried that I was being taken advantage of, and watched out for me. They also reported that he walked in to the grocery store and came out with soup.
Apparently they were surprised, but if a person whose clothes and shoes are falling apart asks me for money, and if I have cash to spare, I will give them money. Scammers suck, but mutual aid is good for the world.
Your point is well taken but it was still within my comfort zone because of the reactions I was getting from the guy. I threw him off his script and he just did not know what to do so I kept pushing it to see how far it would go. All the way to Peoria apparently!
Also- not mentioned was that we had an encounter the week prior where he came to the shop door and asked for money to Buy a Drill so he could start a New Job in Construction and if he did not get the Drill THAT DAY, he would lose the job. Oddly enough there was a Hardware Store across the street and I got him to accompany me to Get A Drill. I got him the cheapest Plug-In Drill they had (he approved it) and wished him luck with his new “job”.
So we already “knew” each other. Sort of.
After he left with his new $29.99 Drill, the guy behind the counter asked me why I bothered with that guy as he was just trying to hustle me. “I Know, I Know,” I replied “Let me be the judge of whether this was worth it or not”.
When he came back a week later and I sent him to Peoria on a Bus, the first thing I did was walk across the street to the hardware store and tell the guys what just happened. They REALLY like that. Now THEY had a new story to tell people as well.
We’ve got a local scammer that’s so prolific that many people know him by name. Usually approaches in a suit with a story about needing to buy some fix-a-flat for a flat tire. He will also show some phony business card and on multiple occasions has been accused of following people to an ATM and being a bit intimidating about it. I don’t believe he even owns a car.
With close-up magic, if the deception isn’t directed at you, it’s often absurdly obvious. I went to college with a guy who wanted people to call him “Sorceror”, wore a leather duster, and did spontaneous magic tricks at women in the library. One time, watching this in horrified fascination, I could plainly see his trick involved a fake-ass rubber thumb, but his target didn’t notice, because she was the one he was tricking (though she, and everyone else, still resisted becoming his girlfriend somehow). It’s a similar thing with Turmp – he’s grifting the people he’s grifting, and he doesn’t bother to hide it from the rest of us the way a good magician would, because there’s no artistry to it, just reptilian predatory instinct.
Another thing your post reminds me of is that sometimes street scammers present a grotesque or alarming aspect in addition to (or instead of) being charming. Like, they’ll throw in some ominous detail about violence in their back story, or they’ll have distressing physical damage that they make sure you see, or they’ll just be uncanny in a way that makes children cry, like Turmp with his non-human grooming regimen. I think that’s a ploy to make the mark uncomfortable and undermine their self-confidence in the interaction.
Heh, like the dude who cornered me in an SF parking lot, and raised his shirt to show me what he said wore bullet wounds and that he needed money to stay out of gang violence. Hard to call it a “scam” since it was implied that if I didn’t give him money he would demonstrate the truth of his claim immediately. Definitely had that intimidation factor going on. :-/
It’s quite common here to see panhandlers at freeway off-ramps, claiming homelessness and such. Some years back, a local news crew began surreptitiously following these panhandlers home… and sometimes home was a single-family home in a nice middle-income neighborhood. What can you do.
Once, my daughter got scammed. She was 17, first trip to Paris with a friend. Waiting for a taxi, a cute guy offered to share the cab, then during the ride, told her about a party that night, and they were invited to come. Later that afternoon, some Elbonians came and stole her and her friend…
For me, what annoys me is knowing that the person thought I looked gullible enough for the scam to work on. Intellectually, of course I know that there’s nothing about me that makes me un-scammable - but my ego would like to believe that I am.
But I often agree with you. Frequently, the people who approach me on the street with some “please help me” story look like they live pretty tough lives. And I don’t believe that most people choose that life. I assume most of them would much prefer to live regular, boring lives at regular, boring jobs living in regular, boring apartments - but for a variety of reasons that I will never know, can’t.
That said, sometimes the stories can go on a little long and I admit that I have lost patience and interrupted to say “look man, here’s $5, I gotta go”.
Here is a peer reviewed scientific study on panhandling in Toronto around the turn of the century.
Average hourly income is in the neighborhood of minimum wage. I do admit some discomfort at the ability to earn more than minimum wage after taxes. However it is not a living wage and one would presume that increasing minimum wage would change the calculus at least a bit.
But monthly income from panhandling is only a few hundred per month. If this were a goldmine people would presumably work more hours per month at it.
Having a non-locally registered vehicle makes it harder (takes longer, if they can do it at all) for the cops to trace the registered owner and their address, of course.
