The Con Man says: "supersize me!"
Chatter on the Brooklyn blogs today have indicated that the notorious Con Man attempted to strike twice today. Over at the newly discovered yahoo group FGKids (Ft. Greene Kids), two successive messages detail his two most recent attempts on Friday.
The first attempt was trying to con a parent and his/her wailing toddler out of money for the LIRR train home. Note that this has been one of his staple come-ons. It has happened before from what we have read. More details here.
The second attempt occurred near Waverly and Gates according to this message. He approached a man and described how his car broke down driving to the hospital to visit his mom who had a heart attack (again, this has been one of his tried and true stories) and wanted $7.50 to get a McDonalds #2 meal, supersized. NB - do they cost that much these days? The writer then states that he felt this was a con job, called 911 and this resulted in about 10 swarming police cars at Waverly and Gates.
Fellow bloggers Daily Heights have put a bounty on a picture of this con man. Hopefully the cops caught him and they already have his mug shot.
12 Comments:
You need to be a member of the group to see those links, can you give us the gist?
there was a squadron of 10 police cars at waverly and gates, probably because a victim called 911. i hope he got caught. that's the gist of it. he's a con man. he preys on ppl of ft greene, clinton hill and prospect heights. he is african american, about 5'10" or so, about 185 to 210 lbs. very unmenacing, but total scumbag. need to know anymore, let me know.
I dont quite understand all the hostility toward a begger. It not like this person is robbing you. You even said he was very unmenacing. All you have to do is say no and keep walking. I'm taking offense to your All Points Bullentin because I fit your oh so vague description. The last thing i want is ten squad running up on me because I fit the description of the infamous begger.
you're right. i realize that that's a very generic description. by the same token, i wouldn't characterize him as a beggar. a beggar may sit there and have a cup and ask for money, or worse, walk up to each person and put a bag in your chest and ask for money. but this guy is intentionally trying to part the victim from his money.
is prey a overreactive word? should it be accost?
this con man actually has gotten $10 from my wife this past summer. and he's taken from a lot of other people also.
but please, do email me and we can discuss further.
ltj,
I share your disguest, beleive me. However, i have somewhat of a different viewpoint on the whole thing. When i first moved to FG 10 years ago, i befriended a couple of 5'10 african males in their early 20s. They where intelligent, well spoken and came from 'good' upper black middle class families. After hanging out a couple of times, one of the guys says, "Hey, let's go down to Wall St and gaffle." So we take the 2 to Wall St and all the while i'm trying to figure out what gaffle means. When we got there, these 2 guys get to gaffling. They had some story about their car breaking down and needing $17 dollars get it fixed. Blah, Blah. Within 45 min they had over $80. The thing that bothered me the most was they didnt appear to need the money. They wore preppy clothing (Loafer,khakis,sweaters) and had a very 'buppie' look to them. It really seemed like were doing it mostly for fun.
More to come....
--IAC
Continued..
At the time, i was a stockbrocker at a small cap boutique firm in Midtown.
As a broker, I learned the art of 'parting a man from his money'. When i saw these guys in action, I was amazed. They later said it was "as easy as asking for it". We got back to FG and I immediately told them, they are wasting their time 'gaffling' and told them that Wall St was where the real $$ was. Shortly after that they joined me at my firm. They did very well cold calling and quickly moving up to account opening. One of the biggest keys to being a sucessful broker is having the balls to ask big and then being persisant until the end and these 2 guys definitely had those traits. I wish this story had a good ending. But sadly it doesnt. After 3 months, one of the guys quit and fell off the radar. After 5 months, the other dude disappeared also. It just so happened that he was responsible for organizing the office NCAA basketball pool and disappeared with about $6000 in pool money. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you... The sad thing was that we had brokers making that much $$ every day($120K/month) and that guy definitely could have been one of them. Talk about a waste.
--IAC
I later learned that that this person was battling that little white rock called crack. By no means was he a 'crack head', but he did like to suck that glas _ick. Anyway, gaffling(hustling) whatever you want to call it, got him the funds he need to 'party'. If his gaffling was sucessful, he got to party, if unsucessful no party. I can honestly say that this guy wouldn't physically take from someone; that would be wrong. By his logic, he was simply asking for money and not forcing/intimidating anyone to do anything thing. According to him, these people could have just said NO and kept walking.
thanks for supporting my assumption that stockbrokers are on par with con men. i'm sure you're proud of yourself...
The post FGKids (Yahoo group) that described the con, the 911 call, and the swarming 5-0 was obviously an attempt at humor through hyperbole. The tale recounts an encounter with the con man that threads together bits and pieces of his m.o., taken straight from previous post on FGKids, and then takes a turn for the absurd with the request for $7.50 for a McDonald's meal and cookies. Would you actually believe that the 77th would send out the cavalry b/c of a 911 call reporting a man asked for $7.50? It was obviously ficticious (and humorous).
Well, Anonymous gets around. LTJB, how's your irony meter?
I saw the con man yesterday at the deli on Green near that horrible intersection on Fulton. The deli that sells $9.99 twelve-packs of Yuengling. You know you know what I'm talking about.
I've been approached by this dork twice. The first time he swindled $10 off of my girlfriend. And the second time he was approaching us--near the aforementioned deli--but turned on his heels when he recognized us.
I asked if he could pay us back that $10 we "loaned" him the other day but he ran off and I didn't feel like making an issue out of it.
Anywhee, I saw him in the deli and tried to get his picture but he knew I was doing something with my cameraphone and didn't like it.
Guy's a jerk, man. It bugs me that he wanders around my neighborhood taking advantage of people's good will. Grr.
frank, kudos to you for attempting to out the guy w/ the cell phone pic. one of these days, he'll have ripped off the wrong guy and he'll get his comeuppance.
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