Originally published at: Watch street scammers get busted as they are scamming | Boing Boing
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To differentiate scams at the Tijuana/Otay border, I’m gonna go with “guy on crutches” who seemingly has club feet or some other abnormality affecting his ability to walk. Those guys can walk. I’ve seen them with my own eyes.
As for the many mothers sitting with their children selling tchotchkes, I’ve heard rumors that some of the kids are not their own but they use them to gain sympathy. I don’t know for sure, but I still give them money because life can be rough in TJ even if you’re scamming for miniscule amounts. 
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i remember seeing that a lot in Nogales. women with small children in native garb of the Sonoran Yaqui people, sitting on the sidewalk with chicklets,cacahuates or small woven bags for sale. hard not to hand over 20 pesos (about $1US, as you know) out of sympathy(?), white guilt(?) or some other cultural thing i can’t describe.
the scammers that frustrate me are the dudes standing on corners, hustling tourists to act as “guides” to show you a restaurant, bar or shop where they get a kickback and you get soaked on the bill. i am fluent enough in Spanish that i can find my way around without your “help”, thank you!
in Havana, i always buy the little rolled paper tubes of peanuts from the cacahuate lady who sings a lovely song about her wares. a simple tube with some 8-10 roasted nuts in it for around a quarter. it’s the guys that walk next to you, frantically sketching a caricature of you as you quicken your pace, only to present you with their masterpiece and demand 5 bucks. i hate that one (and i have a couple of examples that show i went for it, after all 
)
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Yeah, I am all about handing out 20 pesos to the women and the street performers. There’s a great “wrestling duo” here in TJ that consists of a dad and his kid playing like luchadores at the street corners. He grapples the kid while spinning them in the air or swinging them around their body, and they both have their masks. It’s fun to see, but I’d give them money if they were doing it or not.
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The Cup/Balls or 3-card Monte gangs are so obvious once you notice it. Especially the confederate shill who is playing (and winning!) constantly, while waiting for a fish to show up. They always have a thick wad of high-value bills in one hand-- because that’s totally normal behavior for a tourist who’s just come upon an artisanal, fairly-administered game of chance.
If it weren’t for the victims, it’s kind of fascinating to think that these gangs have been reenacting the same scam for thousands of years. In a Roman or Middle Ages market, it would play out exactly the same way (albeit with somewhat more likelihood of violence).
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PSA: My wife got nailed across the street from the Frida Kahlo museum in Mexico City. Some vendors on the sidewalk there sell clothing, and they did the thing where you give them the money and then out of sight when they are supposedly getting your change they switch the bill you gave them for a counterfeit, then they show you that the bill you gave them is fake. I think she was out something like $20 and while it’s easy to think well we’re probably better off than they are it still feels really really shitty to get ripped off, especially when my wife spend a good 20 minutes agonizing over whether to spend that $20 for a blouse. Those assholes can rot in hell.
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This had apparently become such a problem in Tokyo back in 2020 that the police had put out a warning about it. From what I understood the situation was even worse than someone taking you to a bar or restaurant where they’d get a kickback. In these cases the bar/restaurant would vastly overcharge or in some cases even spike the drinks of their victims, run up the bill, and then refuse to let them leave without a payment. They went so far as to escort their victims to an ATM if they didn’t have enough cash on had. I imagine this stuff has fallen off due to the tourism drop from the pandemic and Japan denying entry into the country. But now that they’re opening back up the scams are sure to reemerge.
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I guess this is a good cautionary tale for the future. I will make sure folks check the bill in front of me before any transaction.
ETA: I think part of the problem with scammers in any country is whether the accusers have racial bias. I mean, you always hear scare stories out of Mexico, but as incident-free (by degrees) as my time here has been, I also notice who is doing the accusing and try to understand why.
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My brother in law had a simple piece of advice regarding kids in ragged clothing begging in Tijuana. “Check their shoes; the kids are often students at the private schools over there (points) throwing on some rags to beg for spending money after school that their parents don’t know about.” Sure enough, most of the kids had nice shiny footwear.
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