Scam–tastic #3
In this look at popular scams and rip-offs in Russia, it’s really time to give ‘official’ criminals a turn, rather than the criminal ‘officials’ – who’ve had more than their fair share so far. You’ll probably find the ‘common’ variety grazing on herds of tourists in popular tourist-y areas, where the pickings are good.
The Money-Drop scam is a popular choice and usually involves three or more participants – including yourself of course. Whilst walking down the street, you’ll suddenly notice that someone up ahead has ‘accidentally’ dropped a roll (or wallet etc) of bank notes onto the floor. At this point your natural instinct is to either pick them up in an attempt to return them to their owner, or just to keep them for yourself – depending on your morality or course.
Before you can do either, the owner has sped away and an interloper appears on the scene to pick the cash up in front of you – ostensibly to keep the lot. He/she has noticed that you’ve seen the notes and rather than keep them all, offers you half out of ‘fairness’. This is a poison chalice. The individual is an accomplice to the money-dropper, and is relying upon your cooperation to complete the scam.
Assuming that greed supervenes; you take the bait and walk on – feeling (perhaps) a little guilty but also a little richer. However before long, the original cash-dropper arrives back on the scene and catches up with you to demand back the money that you have ‘stolen’. He/she will probably be accompanied by a some heavies whom you certainly shouldn’t mess with, and who are insistent that ‘justice’ be done. What can you do? You’re standing there with someone else’s cash after all. The complainant wants his money back and things are about to get decidedly ugly; so you hand it over.
The thing is: you only have half of the money – the person who picked up the notes initially has taken the other half and disappeared. You now have to pay the full amount out of your own pocket and the scam is complete. As with all cons, there may be some variation in the detail; the owner of the cash could return with a ‘fake’ police officer instead of some thugs for example, but the mechanism is essentially the same.
The Money-Drop is relatively sophisticated compared to some of the ways in which you can lose out. A simple, ‘swarming’ attack where you are surrounded and hassled by a small crowd of beggar children pleading for money is a crude but sometimes effective method. Close proximity is essential for their light-fingers to get to work, so they may leave with the contents of a pocket or two. This sounds positively Dickensian, and I’ve heard it to be less common since the early 2000’s when the police started to clamp down on this particular, obvious form of tourist-hassle.
If it’s simple and it works, then why change it? That’s something that could be said about numerous variations on the ‘Honey Trap’ scam; a time-honoured earner that preys upon the lonely and naïve. Again, there is a multitude of variations on the ‘core’ theme, but it essentially involves the victim being seduced by the perpetrator to the point where they can be taken advantage of. An obvious example of this is the fake Russian girlfriend scenario, where the man can’t believe his luck in ‘capturing’ such a beautiful prize – so he may turn a blind eye to the amount of money he is spending on her, or sending her way after requests for help with various fictitious hardships: travel emergencies, personal crises, sick relatives, university fees, medical issues and so forth. In some instances, it could be fair to say that “we never learn” – or learn too late.
Even relatively innocuous advances can result in a Honey Trap of sorts. Friendly strangers who make you welcome in a bar (for instance), take an interest and involve you in conversation can just as easily slip some knock-out drops into your drink and leave you dazed, confused and cashless.
It’s a minefield.
[Photo by verbaska]