Ingenious Scams

[TomCollins]

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Er, it's only barely a scam, there's no mark. The owner might pay, but when he does pay he knows it's for protection. It's not clever or ingenious, sometimes people will pay you to not break their [censored]. Other times they call the cops on you, though, and/or have their own associates beat the [censored] out of you. The goal of a scam is that the mark doesn't know he's been conned.

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Of one kind of scam, maybe. The goal of others is just to get money.

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There was this awesome scam I heard about where a guy went to a bank. He gave the teller a note and then the teller gave him all the money. The best part was, the note said he had a gun and would shoot her if she didn't give him the money. But he didn't even have a gun! Awesome!

[wet work]

Another hilarious scam, but also ingenious one from F. Abagnale was another bank deposit scam. Back in the day banks had deposit slots that were literally holes in a wall. You could just drop an envelope off and it would be collected the next day.

He set himself up as a bank security guard/deposit collector, which merely consisted of renting a uniform. Then he placed a sign on the wall saying "Deposit slot out of order- leave your envelopes with security guard." LOL. Apparently he collected so much money he was having trouble getting it to his car and actually had 2 beat cops assist him in carrying the loot to his car. I think it was a station wagon. crazy.


I definitely recommend Catch Me if You Can, excellent book.
His other books are billed as guides on protecting yourself from these types of scams, but really they read like How-To books.

[guids]

[ QUOTE ]
Another hilarious scam, but also ingenious one from F. Abagnale was another bank deposit scam. Back in the day banks had deposit slots that were literally holes in a wall. You could just drop an envelope off and it would be collected the next day.

He set himself up as a bank security guard/deposit collector, which merely consisted of renting a uniform. Then he placed a sign on the wall saying "Deposit slot out of order- leave your envelopes with security guard." LOL. Apparently he collected so much money he was having trouble getting it to his car and actually had 2 beat cops assist him in carrying the loot to his car. I think it was a station wagon. crazy.


I definitely recommend Catch Me if You Can, excellent book.
His other books are billed as guides on protecting yourself from these types of scams, but really they read like How-To books.

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Ive seen catch me if you can, havent read it htough, I have art of the steal, what is the oother title Im missing? and whats it about?

[wet work]

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Another hilarious scam, but also ingenious one from F. Abagnale was another bank deposit scam. Back in the day banks had deposit slots that were literally holes in a wall. You could just drop an envelope off and it would be collected the next day.

He set himself up as a bank security guard/deposit collector, which merely consisted of renting a uniform. Then he placed a sign on the wall saying "Deposit slot out of order- leave your envelopes with security guard." LOL. Apparently he collected so much money he was having trouble getting it to his car and actually had 2 beat cops assist him in carrying the loot to his car. I think it was a station wagon. crazy.


I definitely recommend Catch Me if You Can, excellent book.
His other books are billed as guides on protecting yourself from these types of scams, but really they read like How-To books.

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Ive seen catch me if you can, havent read it htough, I have art of the steal, what is the oother title Im missing? and whats it about?

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Those are the two I'm really familiar with as well. He has a couple others on identity theft. His website is abagnale.com
I had just been thinking about him recently because he was on NPR last week. The other crazy thing is he pulled all this crap between the ages of like 16-21. Every time I read books about stuff like this and smugglers too I'm amazed at how easy they had it back then. Nowadays you really have to have your act together.

[Kiddmother]

This is on a much smaller scale but I was still impressed by it.
My trashy broke brother-in-law finally got his 2 year old potty-trained and I made a comment about him saving money now because he wouldn't have to buy diapers.
He informed me that he hadn't paid for diapers the whole time. He leaves them in the bottom of the cart and then acts busy with the kid but never pulls the diapers up to be scanned and paid for.
He then told me about one time he thought he was caught because the manager was running after him as he was exiting the store. But the manager just started bitching about the cashiers because they were supposed to put a sticker on stuff on the bottom of the cart to show it was paid for. LOL The manager didn't even ask to see his receipt.
But my trashy brother-in-law said it was a perfect crime because if he ever was caught he could just play dumb and say that he forgot to pull the diapers off the bottom of the cart.

[guids]

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This is on a much smaller scale but I was still impressed by it.
My trashy broke brother-in-law finally got his 2 year old potty-trained and I made a comment about him saving money now because he wouldn't have to buy diapers.
He informed me that he hadn't paid for diapers the whole time. He leaves them in the bottom of the cart and then acts busy with the kid but never pulls the diapers up to be scanned and paid for.
He then told me about one time he thought he was caught because the manager was running after him as he was exiting the store. But the manager just started bitching about the cashiers because they were supposed to put a sticker on stuff on the bottom of the cart to show it was paid for. LOL The manager didn't even ask to see his receipt.
But my trashy brother-in-law said it was a perfect crime because if he ever was caught he could just play dumb and say that he forgot to pull the diapers off the bottom of the cart.

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this is standard with cases of beer where Im from.

[BillNye]

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This is on a much smaller scale but I was still impressed by it.
My trashy broke brother-in-law finally got his 2 year old potty-trained and I made a comment about him saving money now because he wouldn't have to buy diapers.
He informed me that he hadn't paid for diapers the whole time. He leaves them in the bottom of the cart and then acts busy with the kid but never pulls the diapers up to be scanned and paid for.
He then told me about one time he thought he was caught because the manager was running after him as he was exiting the store. But the manager just started bitching about the cashiers because they were supposed to put a sticker on stuff on the bottom of the cart to show it was paid for. LOL The manager didn't even ask to see his receipt.
But my trashy brother-in-law said it was a perfect crime because if he ever was caught he could just play dumb and say that he forgot to pull the diapers off the bottom of the cart.

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If hes gonna steal why not just slip [censored] into his coat and stuff?

[guids]

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This is on a much smaller scale but I was still impressed by it.
My trashy broke brother-in-law finally got his 2 year old potty-trained and I made a comment about him saving money now because he wouldn't have to buy diapers.
He informed me that he hadn't paid for diapers the whole time. He leaves them in the bottom of the cart and then acts busy with the kid but never pulls the diapers up to be scanned and paid for.
He then told me about one time he thought he was caught because the manager was running after him as he was exiting the store. But the manager just started bitching about the cashiers because they were supposed to put a sticker on stuff on the bottom of the cart to show it was paid for. LOL The manager didn't even ask to see his receipt.
But my trashy brother-in-law said it was a perfect crime because if he ever was caught he could just play dumb and say that he forgot to pull the diapers off the bottom of the cart.

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If hes gonna steal why not just slip [censored] into his coat and stuff?

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because you cant act dumb if they catch you with a bunch of diapers in your pockets.

[XXXNoahXXX]

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This is on a much smaller scale but I was still impressed by it.
My trashy broke brother-in-law finally got his 2 year old potty-trained and I made a comment about him saving money now because he wouldn't have to buy diapers.
He informed me that he hadn't paid for diapers the whole time. He leaves them in the bottom of the cart and then acts busy with the kid but never pulls the diapers up to be scanned and paid for.
He then told me about one time he thought he was caught because the manager was running after him as he was exiting the store. But the manager just started bitching about the cashiers because they were supposed to put a sticker on stuff on the bottom of the cart to show it was paid for. LOL The manager didn't even ask to see his receipt.
But my trashy brother-in-law said it was a perfect crime because if he ever was caught he could just play dumb and say that he forgot to pull the diapers off the bottom of the cart.

[/ QUOTE ]

If hes gonna steal why not just slip [censored] into his coat and stuff?

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because you cant act dumb if they catch you with a bunch of diapers in your pockets.

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When i was in HS working at a supermarket, people tried this fairly often and I could usually tell who honestly forgot and who was FOS. Oh so you got a gallon of milk, a candy bar, and you forgot about the 40 lb. bag of dog food underneath your cart?

People also tried such ingenious ideas as:

1) rolling cans past the scanner while my back was turned.

2) passing stuff behind their back while standing in front of the card swiper/atm machine.

[guids]

there are so many things that you can do just in a grocery store its sick:

take some t-bone steaks, go to the salad bar, fill up one of the styrofoam containers with steaks, adn ring yourself out on teh self-automated machines, and get 5lbs of steak for 3$


a lot of self serve machines if you put dollars and coins at teh exact same time, it will spit your dollars back out but still count them as if you put them in

as you are walking out, find a receipt in teh trash, look for some high price item (grocery store: meat, sears: power tools, whatever), take the receipt back in "return" your item.