BillLindau

Scamming senior citizens

Here, There and Everywhere With Bill
Lessons from Scam Jam – & those we learn ourselves
By Bill Lindau
It was good to see so many senior citizens at the Scam Jam last month. A tip of the hat goes to Judy Estridge of FirstBank of Troy and the other participating institutions for helping to put on such a quality, informative seminar, and to everybody who took the time to come to the outskirts of Troy and tell us what they known.
We hope all those senior citizens remember what Sheriff Jeff Jordan, prosecutor Kristian Allen, David “The Hammer” Kirkman of the state attorney general’s office and others told them. And I hope I can remember it all many years from now, when I’m ancient and feeble and my mind and body aren’t what they used to be.
So many of those ways to avoid scams, frauds and ripoffs come from common sense. I’m not the street-smartest person in the world, but I do know better than to do stuff such as give out sensitive financial information over the phone or fall for every friendly but down-and-out looking stranger with a sob story to tell. As for e-mails: Well, I very seldom look at my bulk box any more. I’ll hit the “delete all” button without opening a single one of those messages.
I think it would’ve been a good idea to set aside some time to let some of the audience come up and tell about their own experiences with rip-off artists. Tell us either about the time they got fleeced or the way they avoided being fleeced. Might be a good idea to hear out only five or 10 people, however. Because talking to many members of the audience, I got the impression that everybody in that room has found himself/herself on the receiving end of a scam. If they let everybody talk, we might have been there all day and all night.
That’s really a sad thing to see. That’s no way for people to treat somebody’s father or mother, grandparent or great-grandparent. These people worked hard all their lives, raised their children to be hard-working, law-abiding citizens and done an awful lot to make this world as nice as it is. They ought to spend the few years they have left sitting on the front porch talking about their lives, fishing, going to the theatre and otherwise kicking back without a care in the word. Instead, we got a bunch of no-goodniks who don’t care anything about making a quick buck, cowards who would put guns to 85-year-olds’ heads just to grab their Social Security checks.
So what happens? You remain on Red Alert until your dying day. Or your children have to spend most of their lives keeping the scavengers from you door.
I think the world of the sheriff, but I wouldn’t deal with a panhandler the way he said he usually does: Give him/her $2 and send him on his way. I say if you’re going to do that, you need to tell them not to bother you any more, in no uncertain terms.
I tried doing that to one person. Gave a bloke 50 cents so he could buy a cup of coffee (that’s what he said). He had sat down to my table at a fast-food place – uninvited – and struck up a conversation with me until the subject came a tiny bit of change I could spare.
I kept running into the same man afterwards, and – man, he was like a deerfly on a hot summer day, Jim!
He always came at me with some sob story about business being slow or his car getting towed away (not that I ever saw him driving one) and hitting me up again and again and again and again and again.
I said no every time, but he never gave up. He kept popping up for about two more years, before he disappeared. Maybe I should have been a little more aggressive from the start and said, “Now get your cup of coffee and find another table.”
There may be more street hustlers and panhandlers in larger towns and cities, but these little towns in Montgomery, Richmond and Moore counties to have them. I can say this because I’ve encountered quite a few of them.
They’ll hang around banks, stores, shopping malls and other public places. They’ll approach you in the most polite manner, using honey rather than vinegar to catch that particular fly (namely, you). They may either ask you for a ride or ask you for some money with the promise to write a check and give it to you later. If you’re in a coin laundry, they may come up out of the blue and help you fold your clothes or put them in your car (I’ve had two men – two white men – do that to me).
One of those men in the coin laundry then asked me for some money for a pack of cigarets. I said no. “Come on, you’re bound to have some change,” he said.
“I’m telling you, I spent all my money doing my laundry, man,” I said. “I’m flat broke. Get it?”
Another man took one of my loads of laundry and carried it out to my car. He started to put it inside, but I took it from him. “I’ll take it from here,” I said. “AND THAT’S ALL.”
He scampered away, knowing the chances of getting a quarter from me was a lost cause.
Everybody who knows me knows I’m so liberal I make Abbie Hoffman look like a Southern Baptist Minister.
But while I contribute to a fair number of groups that take care of animals and people who are down on their luck, I do not -- or the sake of my own survival – dole out money to every pathetic-looking individual who claims he’s starving to death or doesn’t have a way home.
It really pains me to turn my back on somebody who may really be in trouble. But we got so many shrewd, crafty people lurking around the streets these days that you can’t tell who’s telling the truth. Some of these people should audition for plays at their local community theatres, with all the talent they have.
Citizens of our fair country, help the down-and-outers all you please by volunteering at hospitals and soup kitchens. But you have yourselves, your children and your own finances to think of first. You’re not a one-person charity organization.
If somebody’s telling the truth about his kind of dire straits, the police, a doctor or the Department of Social Services should help him out. If somebody comes at you with his hand out, I’d steer him to a cop.
Say, “Maybe this nice public safety officer will help you sort yourself out, my friend.”
Then watch his reaction.
I’ve just about reached the point where I can smell a street bum a mile away.
Even if he’s just taken a shower.
One day at a gas pump a nattily dressed gentleman approached me and took a piece of paper away from the pump so I could grab it. He had on a bright red cashmere sweater, he was lean and tanned and his hair was white and close cropped.
The rotgut wine on his breath blew his cover.
If you don’t think somebody could get drunk off second-hand alcohol, you should have met this fellow. He almost knocked me over with the smell of whatever he’d had to drink, Jim.
He must have consumed enough of that stuff in his lifetime to build up a tolerance, because he didn’t appear drunk at all. But I knew exactly what to say when he asked me for two quarters: “Try somebody else, boyo!”
And what’s up with this promise to write a check later? I hate to admit this, but I fell for that once when I was in New York. I let this well-dressed serviceman on leave take a $20 bill, and within minutes I just knew I’d never see that money again.
Several people have tried that on me before. No way, doesn’t work on me anymore.
I mean, if you really don’t know where I live, how are you going to send that check? Do you have a pet carrier pigeon or what?
The big cities are full of street people who make quite a mint hanging around airports, train stations and bus terminals. You’ll get off a bus or a train with all your luggage and one of them will grab it and take it to a waiting taxi, for example. Then he/she charges you $2 or $3 before he lets go of your bags.
This happens all over the world. I remember going to Italy one time and an old woman almost made off with my bags.
I was traveling around the city of Florence on a streetcar. I got off the car and the old lady got off with me. We happened to be several blocks from the train station and she started carrying my bags in that direction. After two blocks I remembered enough of the Italian I’d learned in school to say, “Please, good lady, I no go to train station.”
She abruptly put my luggage down in the middle of the street, uttering a few phrases they don’t teach you in school.
I almost wish I’d given that old signora the money she was angling for. I had to admire her for having such spunk. That was a happy ending – for this American tourist, at least.
That’s all folks. And as the late Michael Conrad said on the TV show “Hill Street Blues,” let’s be careful out there.
Contact reporter Bill Lindau at blindau52@yahoo.com or (910) 975-3073.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 5:46 PM