Fricken Fracken Crooks

The BBQ Pit
1

Today after work, I stopped in a restaurant where I’ve come to know the owner. She was upset because she learned she had become a victim of the old “Support Your Local High School” scam.

She had gotten a phone call a few weeks ago from someone selling ad space, the proceeds of which were supposed to go to the high school’s baseball team. She didn’t give him a definitive answer. Last week, a guy came to the restaurant, during lunch rush, and made it sound as if she had already committed to buying the ad space. He showed her a booklet that was several years out of date and said her ad would be on the first page. She asked why he didn’t have a more recent booklet and he made up some excuse. Because she was so busy she didn’t recognize the warning signs of a scam, which, of course, is exactly what sleazebags like this are hoping for. She gave him a check for $95 and he promised to come by on Monday so she could have a look at the ad and make any corrections.

Of course, he never showed and, of course, he cashed the check…

My friend was still very upset about it. She knew she should have been wary but he caught her at such a busy time. She just didn’t think it through. $95 may not sound like much but to a small business owner who hasn’t even been in business for a year, it’s quite a chunk. If she’d gotten the ad, it could have drawn in new customers but now it just made some crook happy for a day or two.

Anyway, I commiserated with her for a while and then headed home to find my Dad had been trying to call me all day. Someone stole his car last night right in front of our apartment building! When I left for work this morning, I saw it was gone but I thought he and his friend were off early somewhere. When I came home, it was still gone, but it wasn’t even 5 yet, so I thought he was still out and about.

The car is over ten years old. It’s a model that a crook would normally would turn his nose up at. But it got stolen anyway. Arrrgh! This is the third car that has been stolen from him, admittedly in about 30 years. A car a decade. Aren’t we lucky? Both other cars were recovered, generally worse for wear but driveable. Maybe this one will be too.

Dad’s digital camera is now history too. He loves his electonic gadgets so that hurts even more than the car. At least he downloaded the memory just the other day so no pictures were lost.

He’s been talking about going to an auto auction to buy another car–he got this and two others from there–so maybe this will get him to actually go. With Father’s Day coming up, maybe we kids can come up with some bidding money. Or it could go for a new camera.

Arrrgh! Stupid asshole crooks! I’d like to whack every one of them upside the head. Or worse!

2

Crooks don’t just steal new or high-end cars. Someone stole my Dodge Spirit, then brought it back and stole my co-worker’s 8-year-old minivan. So you have to have a real crap car, like mine, to discourage theft. They’ll steal them for joyrides, or use them to rob a couple of convenience stores, and abandon them.

3

I’m convinced having a p.o.s. car or something TOTALLY unsexy is the only way to minimize car theft risk. My brother wrecked his first new car, and then someone stole the license off it while it was in the impound yard. he didn’t find out about this until the thief was involved in a hit and run, and my brother got a bill for about $8,000 in the mail.
Then someone stole the car he bought to replace THAT car right out of his fiance’s driveway, with the Club on the steering wheel. The police found it stripped to the frame a few miles away a day or so later.
Me? my only cars have been a 1983 Volvo I bought in 2000 and drove until last year, when I bought a Toyota Echo, the least attractive vehicle ever made. (Although it’s still my baby.) Never had a problem with theft.

And that scam mentioned in the OP is extraordinarily common. I’ve heard of it in multiple states and cities, in a variety of permutations. Some less-organized businesses don’t even know they got scammed becasue they never think to verify the ad ran anywhere. I remember writing about one guy who worked SW Oregon. He got some businesses multiple times, first selling ads on golf scorecards, then selling ads on a calendar for the local school. He even hauled in a local printer and designer to make it look like he was following through. He stiffed them out of their retainer of course, and blew town without even paying his ad salesmen. They finally caught him the third time he worked the area.
That guy was a real piece of work. He got himself committed to the state mental hospital instead of sent to jail. Guess his skills worked on the doctors, too.

4

If the check was only cashed within the past few days, your friend can probably still issue a stop payment and (hopefully) get the money back.

5

I really doubt that would happen. Once the check is cashed it’s a legal matter. She wrote the check out to the person so no fraud was done that the bank can take action on.

6

Ugh. Our 300zx was stolen when we lived in south Seattle. The police found it five days later over in west Seattle, all the stereo parts ripped out, and hypodermic needles strewn throughout the car. My husband spent several days, venomously hissing, “You just can’t have anything nice!” Maybe it’s not everyone’s dream car, but it sure was his. He’d put a lot of work into that thing.

Bleh. We traded it in towards a new car. It just didn’t feel right anymore. Bastards.

7

Probably not. Stop payment orders cost money. The last time I looked into these things, it was like $25, and that was a dozen years or more ago. So putting a SP on a $95 check is probably not worth it.

However, it might be worth the trouble to find out just who cashed that check. The police might very well be interested, and Tikki’s friend might get some satisfaction from having helped solve a crime. She probably won’t get her money back, but sometimes a bit of justice helps with the feelings.

8

I feel her pain, I really do, but she was too busy to understand what was going on and she wrote a check to the guy? I would think I’d say, “This stuff doesn’t make sense. Explain it better or get lost.”

I know someone who apparently used to steal cars, and he said that his only criteria was that they had to be Hondas, because him and his buddies needed Honda parts. They’d disassemble it, salvage the parts they wanted, and ditch the rest. Ugly, pretty, didn’t matter. (Of course, they might’ve only wanted later models, but I didn’t really ask. I just sort of shuffled as far away as possible permanently.)