Same here. Maybe once a year or so we have someone drive up to our place, lost. We are the last home on a dead end private, posted road, so even the one car a year is a bit surprising.
By ‘casing’, they’re not necessarily trying to see if the house is worth robbing and/or the fastest way in/out. In this circumstance (if they were casing it), they’re just trying to see if someone is home. When the door is answered, they want to be able to leave soon, but you can’t just go running from the front porch, that would raise even more suspicion. Asking some stupid question will get the homeowner to tell you to scram and they’ll go back to what they were doing.
The term, as I’m finding out now, is called Knock Knock Burglary. Knock on the door, if there’s no answer break in, if there is have a question ready for them that will let you leave within a few seconds (Oh…I thought this was the Smiths, do you know where they leave/No, sorry, I don’t/Ok Thanks).
It’s more that they’re ‘casing’ the neighborhood. If you actually want to case the house, you need to get in. In that case, you get people posing as door to door salesmen or utility workers. They get a look around and can come back later.
From the OP: “With some difficulty Mrs. J. got rid of them.”
Not the scram type.
Yeah, that’s what I’m familiar with and have happened to me. Somebody came to my door, I answered, and they were like “oh, sorry, I must have the wrong house.” Then I saw them proceed all the way down the block, out of the neighborhood, instead of ringing or knocking on the house next door or across the street, which you’d expect them to do if they just happened to get the wrong house. (There’s like 40-50 houses on my block.)
Posing as utility workers or salesmen is another common one. (Although the vast majority of these are actual salesmen flogging cheaper electrical rates, security systems, and crap like that. I run a Facebook neighborhood group and everyone is all THEYRE CASING THE JOINT, when they are actually just scummy salesmen) The whole, “we think somebody here speaks Chinese” to me just doesn’t make any sense as a schtick someone would come up with as a cover. That just rings to me as somebody actually was looking for someone who spoke Chinese for some reason.
I also get the “I am a young person selling magazines for a college scholarship fund” scam, though I can’t imagine why that kind of person would ask for a Chinese speaker.
On the other hand a caser might go for a line which would strike the potential victim as weird not suspicious. And I wouldn’t overestimate the intelligence of such.
Many suggestions in this thread are followed by comments like “but that doesn’t sound right.”
So maybe they were indeed doing what was suggested, just doing it badly.
I’m trying to put together a story that explains these observations:
- They were carrying a bunch of papers.
- They asked for a Chinese speaker at this address, but apparently didn’t know that person’s name.
- Their explanation of why they were there included the mumbled word “volunteer”.
Of course if it were a scam, this could all be a fabrication, but it is a rather bizarre fabrication. So here’s my story: They work for some volunteer organization. This story works best if that organization provides language translation services to someone. So they got an application from a volunteer, but the application was incomplete or so poorly written that they couldn’t determine the person’s name or phone number. But they thought they could read the address (unfortunately they also read that incorrectly). So they come to the door asking for a Chinese speaker, who if present, would be the elusive volunteer. That would explain the whole encounter, as far as I can see. It remains to be determined if there are really volunteer organizations which employ Chinese speakers like this. This story could also work, though not quite as well, if the volunteer organization wasn’t a translation service, but they believed the applicant spoke Chinese for some other reason. Maybe part of the application was filled out in Chinese? That seem rather implausible though. I’m going with the volunteer translation service.
It’s quite straightforward. If you had replied that you spoke Chinese, they would have pulled a document from the folder and handed it to you.
The document would have started off -
"Dear friend of kindness -
I am the wife of the former Nigerian oil minister. I have been exiled in Beijing, where I do not have Internet access. Your name has been given me as kind Christian person to be of best assistance in removing USD $25000000 dollars from this so difficult situation of country…"
Regards,
Shodan
Years ago two Russian ladies (looked like maybe mother and daughter) showed up at our doorstep looking for assistance (we have a Russian name) but we weren’t able to help them, and they barely spoke English, so we never figured out what they wanted.
A few years ago, when there were multiple houses in my area for sale, I received two knocks on my door from separate real estate agents, asking if I spoke Russian or Swedish. They had clients looking for houses in the area, and they were trying to find a speaker of their language so that if the folks bought a house one-or-two doors down from me, they would have a resource that could translate in case of emergency.
Maybe it was this situation, only poorly executed?
As they were leaving, she should have said “Yǒu kòng zài liáo”.
[sub]Mandarin for “When you’re free let’s chat again”, at least according to my sources.[/sub]
I suspect this is the closest explanation to the truth. They may not have expected anybody to answer and hadn’t thought through their cover story, or just weren’t very bright.
What I don’t get is the “With some difficulty” part. Somebody is at your door you don’t want there, close the door. Easy.
Seriously? You guys really think this is the cover story an idiot is going to come up with? “Hey, let’s go to that house with a stack of papers and if someone answers, we’ll ask them if they speak Chinese”? Come on. The likelihood of this being the truth is about zero in my estimation.
I tend to agree. I know about the knock-knock burglary thing, but why the leather folder full of papers? Why the odd question about a Chinese speaker? And most significant— why didn’t they leave immediately?
To me, the most likely explanation is that they really were looking for a Chinese speaker, but damned if I know why. Real burglars wouldn’t bother coming up with such a bizarre and memorable pretext.