I just got a report in my office from one of our stores that was scammed. The con is an old one. The person asks to change a bill. Then he seemingly changes his mind about 6-7 times, asking for different bills every time. After all is said and done, the con artists ends up with more money than he started with.
I keep thinking about this and can’t figure out how it is done. I imagine that you do something like start with a 20 and then ask for 5 $5 bills. But I know that there is something more subtle to it. Anyone know how this is done?
It’s just a matter of fast talk, to keep the clerk from paying attention to what s/he’s doing. You keep talking, they get flustered and confused, you win.
you’re not likely to get detailed instructions here at any rate. The mods (rightly) limit anything that might promote illegal activities – they could wind up being liable.
Ijn retrospect, I’d like to retract the second part of my post. Even detailed instructions can’t help somebody who doesn’t have the gift of grift in them. For that matter, I once posted fairly detailed info on several short cons (the twenties among them) in this very forum. We can’t have me looking like a hypocrite now, can we?
Cap’n, what you don’t know is that my job is to prevent these scams. By telling me how it is done, I can help insure that 261 of our locations do not fall prey to it.
I don’t see how knowing the elements of a scam is dangerous. Seems to me that since far more people are honest that con artists, publishing the scam would have a net effect of decreasing teh scam.
For example, the nigerian money laundering scam. Knowing it prevents one from falling for it.
Although, most cons I know of prey on the greed of the mark. This one seems to be taking advantage of one’s wish to help a customer and to be polite.
Could you tell me what thread you posted the above mentioned scams in?
I still think that I should reply to the Nigerian e-mail I received by sending “a friend’s” porn site address. Maybe they’ll sign up for a free password (yes, it’s really free) and make “my friend” ten bucks.
Having read this link, I can tell you there is a much slicker version than this.
I had it demonstrated to me once. We laid out money so it was clear who had how much to start and used a book as “purchase item”. I was TOLD I was going to be scammed so was obviously paying very close attention.
I wish I could remember exactly how it was done. But it starts similar to the linked scam, but is set up where the “store employee” catches a problem with the transaction, and is all proud of himself, and still gets taken for 20 bucks.
When I worked at a drug store several people tried this on me. My rule is if they are changing what they want I would stop doing their request, give them their original change and not break another bill or to do anything special until the first transaction was done. Then I would make change for them (if they still wanted it, usually they don’t). If you do everything one step at a time you’re not likely to be hit.
If you have then can you please tell me what it is since yesterday i got plain looted by this guy who wanted to borrow some money from me and then kept changing his mind