Meet the "Crying Girl" con artist of Davis, California

Meet the "Crying Girl" con artist of Davis, California, who has earned a spot on the Davis Wiki, with photos tracked down by the Wiki's users.

The "crying girl" is a particularly prolific and notorious scammer who has been victimizing people in Davis. She is a dark haired girl who has dyed her hair reddish blond who sometimes wears heavy, tear-smeared make-up. She hangs out around the downtown area or in front of grocery stores, clutching a train schedule and approaching people with one of two stories. Depending on the age and gender of her mark, she alternates between a story involving her mother stranding her in Davis and another involving her boyfriend dumping her and then stranding her in Davis. She has been known to fake crying during these encounters, often with real tears. The amount requested for "train tickets" will generally be around $40 dollars, give or take a few dollars to lend legitimacy. Reportedly, she has also begun telling people a new story wherein she purports to be homeless. She has been known be become aggressive when people make her mad and confrontations with her should be avoided.

Crying Girl Con Artist (Thanks, Dale!)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Jeremy Hill

I love the kids we get here in Chicago handing out flyers asking for money for their basketball team. Weird how they run/hide when the cops go by.

I’m also pro offering to buy food for people. I’ve done it a few times. I’d much rather make sure the money is being spent on what they say it is. If it’s food you really want, I’m all for helping you get it.
McLuhanesque

This reminds me of the famous Toronto panhandler, “Shaky Lady” who was quite affluent, but posed as a homeless, tattered, street-person with a form of some degenerative disease like Parkinson’s. At the end of her daily “shift” at one of Toronto’s busiest intersections (Yonge and Bloor), she would disappear down an alley, where she parked her car. Here’s a news story that describes her “plight”: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1024896474326_20305674
Mitch

I heard a guy who claimed to be a few dollars short of the bus fare at the Port Authority terminal in New York and I told him to go collect returnable bottles. He didn’t like me very much.

I’m more likely to give money if people just ask for it in a straightforward way without insulting my intelligence with a bullshit story. Someone singing, no matter how badly, usually gets something from me, too.
nanoquimico

I’ve seen her at a safeway. The story was that her abusive boyfriend let her out of the apartment and needed money for a hotel. She was moderately hot but a bad actress. I didn’t buy the crying and the fact that a few bucks will magically solve her problem.
nutbastard

well, i hope it was worth it, selling her soul for a quick buck through manipulation and deceit. all the cold nights will have been worth it – it’s nice and toasty where she’s headed.
starbreiz

When confronted by these sorts of people, I usually offer to go buy them their entire ticket myself. I’ve never had a single person accept, because they wanted the cash.
JoshuaZ

We’ve got a very similar woman here in Boston who normally rides the Red Line. She has a standard story about how she’s got two kids at home back in Connecticut, her husband’s dead, and needs to get back to Connecticut after some tragic accident left her stuck in Boston. I’m really tempted to shout out a rating the next time she starts the story off. Something like “3 out of 5 stars. You forgot the part about the Gulf War.”
Anonymous

well it beats working 6k in three months let say begging for money it a full time job
Anonymous

As a resident of Davis, I laughed to see this on Boing Boing. There are signs all over our town warning people about this girl, and yet there doesn’t seem to be anything we can really do about her. She’s just that good of an actress, I guess!
MrJM

Just what the world needs — another Performance Artist.
elevatedprimate

Here’s one that I encountered twice over the course of about 5 years in two different cities. It’s not really a panhandling scam (I don’t think) but it definitely set off my scammer spidey-sense. I’m curious how prevalent it might have been.

I’m driving down the street in Denver at some point in the late ’90s when I hear someone trying to get my attention from a neighboring van while we sit at a stoplight. I roll down the window and the dude asks me if I want some free stereo speakers. I think about it for a second, the spidey-sense tingles, and I tell him I have plenty of speakers at home. “But c’mon, man! You can always use more! They’re FREE SPEAKERS!” We go back and forth like that for a couple of stoplights. I keep saying no, and I go about my day.

About 5 years later, I’m walking down a busy street in Austin when a guy pulls up next to me in a car and asks me if I want some free stereo speakers. I stare at him blankly for a good 20 seconds (because…you know…I can’t believe my GREAT LUCK in being randomly offered free stereo speakers…AGAIN). I say no, etc., and go about my day.

I don’t think these were the same guys. In both cases, there were at least two other people in the vehicles.

Has anyone else ever heard this line? I have a decent spidey-sense for BS, but I must have a terrible con-artist mind because I can’t figure out the angle. Where would this have gone if I’d taken these dudes up on their once (or twice) in a lifetime offer? Would I have woken up in a bathtub full of ice with suspicious incisions on my body? Maybe they were just trying to sell me some free speakers?
- timbearcub
  
  I had that scam about 10 years ago in the UK. The ‘psst want any hi-end speakers for Â£40′ – what they do is do a schwicheroo or sell you empty speaker cabinets or junk:
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_van_speaker_scam
  
  Free is an alternative, I’ve heard odd things like they give you them free then rush back and claim their boss had demanded they charge or something, that they’ll be in big trouble without a ‘sale’ or steal it back from you. Not good.
- timbearcub
  
  Luckily my approach to the high-pressure sales tactic is to walk which is what I did.
  
  Later did some research and found out it was a scam! Phew!
Anonymous

It is a con, especially since these pitches often involve a promise to pay you back.

And it is *really* a con against other people who genuinely do need the help. If I really did have my wallet stolen, I would like to think that I could approach somebody with the promise to pay them back for train fare and be taken at face value. Nobody who’s been exposed to a con artist like this would help me.
Vanwall

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a Sherlock Holmes episode in 1891, “The Man with the Twisted Lip”, about a prosperous man who disappears, and an ugly beggar is arrested for probably murdering him. Yup, turns out the beggar was the prosperous man in disguise, making a tidy living begging instead of working at a conventional job. Nothing new under the sun.
Anonymous

“Sometimes I give. Sometimes I don’t. When I do, I don’t care what they do with the money. That’s not the point. Whether they’re buying a banana or drugs, they’re obviously in a much worse situation than I am and I’m usually dead damn broke.”

ThatÂ´s pretty much how I feel about it too.
I find, however, that I prefer when thereÂ´s no pitch and panhandlers just ask me for money upfront. The more elaborate the pitch gets, the more I feel that they are wasting my time, an the less likely i am to give. Maybe that’s some sort of reverse psychology going on there.
magnetiquewolf

This kind of stuff really pisses me off because it stops people from helping people who are in actual need, worse, it stops ME from wanting to help people who may actually be in need.

I’ve been in pretty dire straights a few times in my life and have NEVER had to beg for money. There are always bottles and cans to pick up and bring back to the grocery store, a food bank, a shelter, or the odd cash job or one-day labour gig here and there to get by.

I have a family member who brags about how much money she makes every day to fund her extremely selfish lifestyle. She pulls in between $1k-2k per week, which is more than I’ve ever made per week (net) at any job I’ve ever had. It pisses me off to no end. Kind of surprising how many people are so easily suckered into giving up their hard earned cash to some beggar who probably makes more money than THEY do. She pretends to be mentally challenged. Horrid woman.
Roy Trumbull

The guy I admire worked his hustle near a traffic light. He had a sign that said, “Why should I lie? I need a beer.”
- Donald Petersen
  
  I’ve seen the “Why lie? I need a beer” guy at the top of the Los Feliz exit ramp from the northbound 5 for years and years. I always appreciate his merry smile; I’d guess he gets all the beer he could want.
  
  I occasionally get a sob-story solicitation now and then, most often at a gas pump. Sometimes I help out, others I don’t. Usually I can’t. But a couple of times I’ve given people rides fairly far out of my way, one time in my ’68 F250 with a bad coolant leak which required frequent stops for water and cooling down. Haven’t had occasion to regret those rides yet.
Anonymous

sort of like the “cat girl” who hangs around the Riverview movie Theater in South Minneapolis.
she carry’s a cat and puts on the “ride home”act when the late movie lets out.sort of the girl version of the guys who do the cardboard sign at stop lights.
dragonfrog

A couple of memorable variations on that general theme…

A fellow approached me a while ago for gas money – his truck was stranded somewhere nearby, completely out of gas, and he needed to buy a can of gasoline, and there was some other good reason why he didn’t have his wallet, and I half remember he had to go pick up his daughter who was sick or something. I answered (completely truthfully) that I didn’t have any money, but I lived just a few blocks away, and there was a can of gasoline in the garage that we could fill his truck with. Turns out he wasn’t that interested in fetching his daughter.

More recently, an obviously down and out man approached me for gas money for his Lexus, which was stuck nearby. We walked a couple of block together and embellished his story further, by the end of which he also needed to buy hay for his flying reindeer, among other pressing expenses. That guy I gave $10, and no hard feelings.
Anonymous

Whenever I meet such a person I think: Would I trade my job with someone being on the street begging for money the whole day? Whenever I hear people complain about the old ladies sitting on the streets, the “fake” amputees, the flimsy stories of lost people: it’s not fun doing that, they must have a reason, they’re desperate.
- magnetiquewolf
  
  au contraire, dude. they’re having a blast. they are fully aware that the social humiliation they are subject to every day is nowhere near as humiliating as being stuck in a cubicle all day as a wage-slave. they’re not desperate, it’s a lifestyle.
  - alisong76
    
    Wow. Your idea of social humiliation is so completely different to mine.
    - magnetiquewolf
      
      I’m assuming your idea of social humiliation is based on the status quo.
      
      Please, explain to me why begging for money on the street is more humiliating than working in a cubicle all day as a wage-slave.
      - dculberson
        
        You have a very different (and incorrect) definition of slave in mind, apparently.
      - blueelm
        
        “Please, explain to me why begging for money on the street is more humiliating than working in a cubicle all day as a wage-slave.”
        
        Are you joking?
        
        That’s ridiculous. Begging on the street has low social value. People who do it put themselves at enormous risk for very little money. There’s such a massive disconnect between the things you describe it’s hard for me to imagine you have any contact with *either* strata.
        
        I’ve been in both places, and as a current “wage-slave” I can say for certain it’s not humiliating at all.
        
        Unless you’re a pretentious hipster type.
- paprbgprncs
  
  Yes, this exactly! This girl sounds like a real mess, what with the hurling a hunk of concrete at someone who called her out, but I don’t have a problem giving to people who ask. I live in NYC so I encounter requests on a daily basis. Sometimes I give. Sometimes I don’t. When I do, I don’t care what they do with the money. That’s not the point. Whether they’re buying a banana or drugs, they’re obviously in a much worse situation than I am and I’m usually dead damn broke. But I’ve never had to ask strangers for money and I feel thankful for that.
optuser

Maybe some UC Davis students and local citizens want to form a flashmob group that are available during the two hour block this chick is working. Each person brings five copies of the flyer and a camera phone. Form a ring 30 feet around her and photo her, her crew, and their cars. She can’t hit all of you with the cement, and you’re all witnesses if there is any violence.

Evaluate.
B

About 15 years ago, I was at the large train station in Chicago (Union?)and decided to walk around the block. I had a twenty and a five in my pocket. It was all I had to get me back to Syracuse.
A lady with a child stopped me on the street, she was hysterical and asking for money to get her and the child home. I reached in my pocket and gave her what I thought was the five but as I passed it into her hand I realized it was the twenty. I couldn’t take it back and I finished my walk just pissed as hell at my stupidity.

I later saw her and the child in the station buying a ticket home. She smiled and waved. It was legit.

Somehow I managed to get free drinks and had a lovely train ride home.
Anonymous

Ha! I had a similar scam woman approach in NYC’s Penn Station, when I called her out she laughed and hung out with me for about 20 min, after she heard my (true) vagabond adventure story she gave ME $5…. you know your doing well when the scammers give money to you!
- dequeued
  
  dude, people do that in NYC Penn and Port Authority every freaking day.
grikdog

I’m so old I remember when Scholl’s had a pretty good cafeteria on M Street a couple blocks from Logan Circle, in D.C. in 1975. I used to walk home from work and eat at Scholl’s every evening. The bums always hit me up for spare change, and I always gave whatever I had in my pocket. The reactions ranged from gratitude, to thanks, to gloating by guys who made sure I knew they were making an easy living, to the girl who cadged my change and then ATE AT SCHOLL’s, a bit higher on the hog than I did that night. The only time I turned anyone down was when the con got too obviously revolting, like the bum who picked the scab on his forehead bloody raw then tucked in his chin to make sure I saw it. With that much enterprise, he could cash pop cans. Once I shed an aggressive addict, and he accosted a stricken-looking suit on his way up to Logan Circle to pick up a whore. The only ones I truly despised, though, were the free advice guys who thought I was daft for dropping a little change now and then. I’m pretty sure THOSE guys were not angels unawares.
TomXP411

I always feel bad when someone asks for $5 for bus fare, and I don’t give it to them. (I knew several people who, in high school, routinely pulled that scam… a pretty girl can make $100 pretty quickly by asking for “bus fare” home.)

But think about the flip side of this: being charitable makes us better people, and charity is about the act of giving, not the act of receiving.

Don’t get me wrong: someone who panhandles by lying to people should be exposed and punished. But that doesn’t lessen the act of charity for those people who are taken in and give to her.
- PS
  
  I couldn’t agree more. I’ve worked at enough homeless shelters to not feel guilty about saying no (especially if I just don’t have the money) and to not care about “being taken in” when I do give, even knowing the story is made up.
  
  Almost everyone who is begging for money, no matter what it’s for and no matter how elaborate their “act”, is living a life that almost nobody reading this blog would choose to trade them for.
  
  Regardless of the particulars, the act of giving to others ennobles us.
osmo

Plus its a way to make a living for some. Not a nice way – but its a way.
Anonymous

Oh no!! Report her to Keep Davis Boring immediately!!

http://daviswiki.org/Keep_Davis_Boring
- Anonymous
  
  “Keep Davis Boring” supports cultural and musical diversity in Davis. However, black musicians should only be allowed to play the blues or jazz, preferably instrumentals.
  
  WHAT
  THE
  HELL?
  - Bill Albertson
    
    Breathe, man, breathe! It’s just that low-key Davis sense of irony in action.
    
    Hmm. Then again, I’m trying to remember the last time I saw another black person in Davis who wasn’t a student or pulled over on a vehicle infraction…
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    “Keep Davis Boring” supports cultural and musical diversity in Davis. However, black musicians should only be allowed to play the blues or jazz, preferably instrumentals.
    
    That’s code for ‘No Rap’.
  - Anonymous
    
    I’m 100% sure that’s not-so-subtle sarcasm as commentary on the whole idea of ‘Keep[ing] Davis Boring’.
    
    -Graham
  - Anonymous
    
    I think they’re referring to the campus decree a few years ago that they would no longer allow “rap music” on campus because of the out-of-town non-student “element” it brought out.
John Napsterista

Can we somehow get her, the Hipster Grifter and _____ together, for a The View-like roundtable discussion program? Suggestions for a third host(ess) appreciated.
Jinglefritz

I was on Venice Beach Boardwalk last week and a guy in a leather jacket had a sign that said “Fuck you – Pay me” I was almost taken in by the honesty. I bought a bong instead.
Xenu

I walk by two to four of these types on a daily basis. I wouldn’t call them “con artists” so much as “creative beggars.”

When you see the same act over and over again, on a daily basis, it seems more like a well-rehearsed act than a con.
- Brainspore
  
  Assholes like this are the reason I don’t give out money at all any more. If a person on the street asks for money to get small-ticket stuff like a meal or local bus fare I usually offer to buy the item for them- which makes the honest beggars happy and most everybody else downright angry.
- Anonymous
  
  Uhh, getting people to give you money by lying to them is fraud. Creatively and done and well rehearsed, or not.
  
  Is someone who routinely robs banks the same way over and over again doing a well-choreographed dance number?
  - Xenu
    
    If I don’t even consider believing it, is it still a lie?
    - Brainspore
      
      If she intended you to believe it, then yes.
Roy Trumbull

There are a good many cons. One is the person stranded at a Bart station who just needs a few more dollars on his tickets. The sailor complete with sea bag who needs money to get back to his ship.
One enterprising beggar on Powell street 20 years ago incorporated a cute dog in his act to sucker folks. Within weeks a dog became a standard prop.
The sickest one I ever saw was a guy who was truly spastic blocking the sidewalk making noises and waving his arms. One day I saw his handler pop open a cache kept under his shirt and withdraw a roll of twenty dollar bills.
The Three Penny Opera depicts beggars who had assigned locations and costumes. Some things never change.
alisong76

Ugh. We’ve got one who goes door to door, claiming that her daughter/son/significant other has been in an accident in another town and she has to get there but needs petrol money. She asks for odd amounts like $8, $6 etc in an attempt to seem more genuine.
angryhippo

There’s one woman who works the Lankershim exit on the 134. She has an appropriately cute/sad puppy with her and she tries to match the sad look. Pretty harmless until it dawned on me she had been working the same angle for at least six years.
Matt Staggs

“I know all there is to know about the Crying Girl…”
Stefan Jones

In the late 70s, in the depths of Penn Station, I settled into a seat on the LIRR train to Oyster Bay and prepared to take a nap.

A young woman, maybe early 20s, walked into the car and announced that she’d lost her ticket money and needed help getting home. She sounded earnest. A tiny, little bit “off,” but not enough to come off as a con artist.

She got a few bucks and walked off.

Fast forward almost twenty years. In the depths of Penn Station, I settle into a seat on the LIRR train to Oyster Bay and prepare to take a nap. The very same woman walks on the car and makes an almost identical pitch.

Only she’s getting old, and she delivers her pitch in an uninflected drone, like the world’s most unenthused telemarketer reading a script.

She gathered a few bucks and walked off.

Whenever I feel uninspired and dissatisfied with my job, I think of that pathetic cheat.
Chris

Is she hot?
knodi

Yeah, this is a con the same way that taking pens from a bank lobby is a daring daylight bank heist.

I had a paraplegic in a motorized wheelchair ask me to disengage his gears and push him over to the side of a building, where he could plug his chair into an unlatched outlet… He said his battery is worn out and he needs to replace it, and he was on the way to buy a new one, although he doesn’t know why he should bother, since he’s $10 short on the price anyway. When I said no, he unplugged his chair and drove off. And even THAT’S not a con.

A con is more than just a beggars who lies- generally you have to give the victim something of “equal or greater” value, which turns out to be fake… or take advantage of their greed, something like that.
- rrh
  
  Why is it a con if you take advantage of someone’s greed but not if you take advantage of their sympathy? If I put on a suit and went door to door collecting money for a charity and kept it myself, wouldn’t that be a con? So if I give a bullshit story about how I was abandoned by my boyfriend or need to replace my battery.
David Carroll

This young “lady” is clearly an accidental but accomplished student of social Darwinism. I trust she will learn that the “get aggressive” part of the con cuts down on valuable “out of jail” time.

I run into people just like her about 10 times a year. If they ask for more than the price of a city bus ticket ($2.50) or are poor actors, it’s “no sale for you”!

I see them as a corrupt form of busking. (a true art form BTW) They don’t get my coins if the suck either.
avraamov

if i hang a picture of her in my house, will it burn down?
dhalgren

I think the best ‘con’ if you want to call it that was when a bunch of punker kids rolled up on me and asked for beer money.

1) is it a con when they actually do want ‘beer’ money?

2) is it a con if you hang out and drink the beer with the punker kids?

Anyway fun times in the OC in the 80′s.

But I digress…

I live near the VA in Long Beach. Across the street from the VA is a RALPHS. Back when there used to be a Super Crown Books there I was about to walk into the bookstore when one of the vets I would see all the time straight up asked me for money to buy vodka. I gave him $5 – I was happy to help out – he was happy he had $5 – and then some old lady blue hair came up to me and started screaming in my face about how horrible alcohol was and that I was helping the man die, blah blah blah.

I have yet to hit an old lady, but she was close to getting her ass knocked out.

You know I’d rather be ‘conned’ out of $5 on the street face to face – at least it was my own damn fault if I got scammed – then get mugged by our government knowing that our hard earned money is being flushed down the black hole that is the United States of America.
Stefan Jones

“The Three Penny Opera depicts beggars who had assigned locations and costumes. Some things never change.”

There’s a “begging station” near me, by the entrance to a freeway. One of the regulars there works from a wheelchair. (“Disabled homeless please help.”) One day I saw him on his way to the corner, pushing the wheelchair.

I’m not uncharitable. I gave more than $2000 to a wide variety of charities last year. I run the food drive and toy drive and school supply drive at work.

But I never give money to panhandlers. I can’t get past the deceit of their pitches.
Bill Albertson

I think the best scam I’ve ever seen was with two teenage boys collecting money for their intramural basketball team. They have a sign up list for mailers on a clipboard, and look very sincere, with this whole schpiel about keeping at risk youth off the streets. However, after signing up and donating money once (who doesn’t want to help neighborhood kids?), I never heard from them again. But I have seen them at two other locations across the city. Which is odd, considering they were supposed to be local to our high school…

The second time, at another store across town, I watched them. These guys were collecting at least $60-$200 an hour! I wish I could say I was genuinely upset, but in a way they were telling the truth- they were at risk youth, and their con was keeping them off the streets.
Anonymous

Greyhound provides FREE RIDES HOME for stranded persons under 21. Call 1-800-RUNAWAY. If a young person claims to be stranded, tell them about this. If they are really in trouble, this can help. And usually you can tell if a person just wants cash by the way they respond to constructive suggestions to solve their purported problem.

http://www.1800runaway.org/youth_teens/home_free.html
http://www.greyhound.com/HOME/en/About/InTheCommunity.aspx

I ran into this lady in Davis. Needing money for a bus/train/cab ride is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
EricT

If you read the comments on the wiki, someone purporting to be Her, Jill, Amber, threatend the guy who shot her picture.
“We know where you lay your head, good luck”
They have a lic # and numerous eye witness reports.
And the cops do nothing.
Anonymous

Try not to startle her next time!
The Mudshark

When I was about 15 and still believed in the fundamental good of people I was approached by a woman with a child in a stroller. She fed me some bullshit story about her other child that was supposedly held hostage by her landlord and asked me for money. Unbelievably, I gave her some (quite a lot for me at the time actually) and agreed to meet her again the next day. That afternoon I made a list of organisations and phone numbers to get her help when we would meet again. I actually did meet her, but all she did was ask for more money. This time I was smarter and just went home, very disillusioned.

I was approached by the same woman with the same story again in a different part of the city about a year later and became so furious I just yelled in her face to get the fuck away from me.

I still give money to honest panhandlers but I will never be fooled again by some BS sob story.
Anonymous

True story:

I was going from Guangzhou (Canton) in China to Macau, many years ago. I had just bought a ticket at the bus station, and was heading out to find a public toilet before the long evening bus ride. Naturally, young foreigner in seedy bus station, I was mugged within 20 seconds. Lost my wallet with all my Macau Patacas (local currency) but still had about 20 patacas worth of Chinese currency with my bus ticket in my breast pocket.

I was too tired to be upset, I just went back to the ticket counter and waited for my bus to be called up. At around 22:00 hours I finally got to the border town, left the bus and walked across the border, all guards being half asleep and I being the only traveler (this was back in colonial days).

Now I was in Macau, at the border and could either take a bus into town for money I didn’t have or take a walk that would take hours (and having no food, no water being already exhausted from 50 hours of nonstop traveling in Chinese buses on dirty country roads this didn’t seem like a good idea). So when I saw a lady walking down the deserted street right between the bus stop and the border, I just walked up to her and in my best (pretty bad) Cantonese asked her if she had money. Naturally my intention was to accept the 3-5 patacas for the bus ride and then give her all my remaining Chinese cash (that Macanese often had opportunities to use). She looked really strangely at me, gave me a 10 patacas bill and then ran off before I could give her anything.

Naturally running after a strange lady in a darkened street is a big no-no in any country so I gave it up, took a bus to the center of Macau and called my friends to arrange for a locksmith to come over and let me in.

So sometimes the sob stories are actually true! (^-^;)
millrick

i once handed a bag of apples to apparently homeless dude who was asking for food money. his response? “WTF am I going to do with these? I can’t buy anything with apples!”

much more pleasant is the young woman who used to buy smiles on the street corner. giving her some change bought you a lovely smile and thank you from her.
perchecreek

I used to work for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS). While I was there, they laid off the 25 year old stoner lass — single, one child — who did the data entry. According to the LLS’ form 990s, around about 1997, the CEO’s salary was a reasonable $100,000 to $150,000. By 2005 or so he was making $500,000, and had a $60,000 expense account — more than my salary, and my salary was more than any of the line workers who actually did the begging. I don’t give money to organized charities.

I lived in the Tenderloin (20 years and three recessions ago), and I would always give a dollar or two to the regulars who staked out corners within a block or two of my building (though I was a shade less broke then they). I saw it as insurance — they knew who I was, and they knew I knew who they were. But I don’t give money to people who commit battery, or who lie.

Nevertheless, compared to the corporate scum I’ve had the misfortune of dealing with, anybody on the street is a cut above.
- magnetiquewolf
  
  “I used to work for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS). While I was there, they laid off the 25 year old stoner lass — single, one child — who did the data entry. According to the LLS’ form 990s, around about 1997, the CEO’s salary was a reasonable $100,000 to $150,000. By 2005 or so he was making $500,000, and had a $60,000 expense account — more than my salary, and my salary was more than any of the line workers who actually did the begging. I don’t give money to organized charities. ”
  
  This is precisely the reason why I don’t give money to organized charities. With 15 years of accounting under my belt, working as a contractor for dozens of companies, I have seen so much financial corruption that I am completely disillusioned towards corporate crime.
  
  There is absolutely no reason why a CEO of a charitable organization should be making half a million dollars per year, particularly when most of their work time is spent going on golf trips, dinner meetings, and otherwise screwing the dog.
  
  I would rather give 2 bucks to the local boozehound beggar than 2 dollars to Red Cross, say.
  - nixiebunny
    
    That’s too bad that LLS has turned you off of giving to charities. They’re not all bad. I volunteer for a local childhood cancer charity that actually does the work that LLS claims to do.
    
    I agree that LLS appears to exist for the purpose of fundraising – we have a childhood leukemia survivor in our family, and LLS hasn’t provided any services to us at all.
    
    Our local charity, on the other hand, gives us many free events and helps out families who are out of money.
Ciccilio

There was a woman who worked the DC metro a few years ago. She would dress in a really nice business suit, like Prada or Cavelli, totally done up right. Not flash. She would wear her hair different and put on wigs. Always looked the part. Very attractive. She would say she accidentally left her purse on a train, or it was stolen, and ask for twenty or more bucks, “to get through the day”. I watched guys in Military Brass give her fifties and hundreds. She would always give you a big thanks and ask for a business card so she could get it back to you. Very good scam. Only reason I caught on was she asked me two days running on different stops, then I started seeing her regularly but always dressed different. She was making serious money.
Halloween Jack

Now we know all there is to know about the crying game.
Antinous / Moderator

There was a ‘homeless’ guy in SF who would sit at the trolley stops with a sign that read, depending on the year, “Homeless Due To Earthquake”, “Homeless Desert Storm Vet”, etc. He lived in an apartment and took the trolley to ‘work’ every day.
mortis

Around these parts, the skit usually starts with “Hey, lemme holler at you for a second…” and then the inevitable “we need gas money to get back to _______.”

^m^
Anonymous

I get hit up at Boston’s North Station on a regular basis by the same three-four panhandlers, using the same basic line — “Need a couple bucks for a ticket.” When I see one of them coming, I try to beat him/her to the punch by preemptively asking for a couple bucks for Dunkin Donuts.
Bevatron Repairman

There’s a lady who shows up on BART occasionally claiming her niece is *just about* to be taken off life support at Children’s Hospital Oakland because they can’t pay the bills. Now, I don’t care if you are the best beggar in the world — and if Children’s was simply going to pull the plug here — you can’t pay the bills at Children’s with street donations. That aside, the woman’s niece has been almost dying for years now. It’s a pretty effective hustle — she does get the attention of the whole train car at once — as I have never seen her leave the car without some money.

More awesome was the fellow I saw on a crowded train in Seoul. Old guy on a rush hour train, just started *screaming* at the top of his lungs and jammed through the train, back and forth the length of the train, pushing away all traffic. When, after 4 stops (and six or eight laps of the train) someone gave him a few coins, he moved to the next car and started over.
danwarning

“corrupt form of busking?”

The busking I know has no ulterior motives nor makes victims who feel cheated and are less inclined to give monetary appreciation for a practiced skill in the future.

It’s an insult to busking to compare it in any way to it.

It’s vampires, preying on kind people.
Wendy Blackheart

I live in NYC. I generally don’t give money to anyone unless they’re really fucking entertaining – and there are some *really* entertaining people on the train at times. The guys who do the dancing with flips and stuff on the 4 and 5 trains usuallyy get a couple of bucks, as does the midget dressed like Michael Jackson, the nice old man playing the Peanuts jazz theme on the piano, and pretty much anyone brightening my day a bit. Though the chick at the E and V platform in the morning who sings “Purple Rain” is driving me nuts. She’s not that good, and the song sucks.

When people ask for food, I usually offer what I have, especially if I can afford to buy myself something else. I almost always have a bit of fruit or a granola bar or something. Some evenings, I have diner left overs.

However, its always very frustrating, because 8 out of ten times, they say no, and ask for money again. (The guy who fashioned an outfit from newspaper and trashbags who blackens his face at the uptown steps for the F/V at evening rush hour got all annoyed when i offered some oranges, and the guy who sits outside the uptown F at 14th in the evenings usually just yells at me, even when I offer food or my diner leftovers.

However, there are those who say ‘Holy shit, thank you!’ and either take and store or immediately eat what I gave them, and I’m glad to be able to have helped a little.
Anonymous

Here in Boston we have a guy who works the Red Line, trying to scam money “to get to Springfield” (about 90 minutes by bus) where he “has a job waiting for him” and is staying “at his grandmother’s house”. he goes from car to car between Park Street station and JFK, where he usually gets off and boards the inbound train to Park Street. Rinse, lather, repeat.

This idiot was so bad at his con, repeating the same script in exactly the same way over and over, that I grew disgusted with him – not for his crime, but for how bad he was at it. Last time I heard him start up, I started doing it with him, loudly. He would pause, thinking I would stop, but I filled the silence with comments like, “We’ve heard this one before!” and “You’re not very good at this!”. Then, when he would start up again, I would continue to say his lines along with him. He got off at JFK, and I haven’t seen him since. Maybe he finally got to Springfield, or maybe he got how lame he is. Either way, good riddance, amateur.
delzey

this scam, and variations of it, have been used for 70+ years. and it keeps working because people don’t want to be “rude,” want to assume the best in in their fellow man and woman, and because it would never occur to them that someone would expend so much energy concocting so “elaborate” a con.

in truth, i knew of someone in college who had a circuit of locations and pulled this con one summer to the tune of $6k because he didn’t want to have to find a job. it still looked like a job to me though…
- blueelm
  
  “in truth, i knew of someone in college who had a circuit of locations and pulled this con one summer to the tune of $6k because he didn’t want to have to find a job. it still looked like a job to me though…”
  
  Yep. It is still a job and a stupid one at that. 6k in three months? That’s 2k a month? Might as well have worked at Starbucks. No one arrests you for that, you’re not as likely to get robbed (people know you have cash and won’t go to the cops), and you get something to stick on your resume with impunity.
kc0bbq

The best sign I’ve ever seen was in Minneapolis, on Huron heading onto the UofM campus. The guy was sitting in the median. “Throw change at me!! (Even pennies) It’s fun!”
Sekino

I agree with Brainspore: Deceit is deceit, no matter who does it (or how poorly).

One day, this man walked up to me, looking distraught. He said that he was from out of town for a job interview and that he had learned that his young son was gravely injured back home. He had a return train ticket but didn’t have enough money left to pay for the re-scheduling fee (we were a few blocks only from the train station so it seemed plausible). Even though I was rather down on my luck myself at the time, I gave him all I had on me, $20, had a short conversation and sincerely wished his son the best.

A week later, this awfully familiar-looking man approached me: He was in town for a job interview and had heard that his young daughter was in a car accident…

“Wow, your family’s really fucked up, isn’t it?” I interrupted. The puzzled look on his face told me he had no clue whom he was talking to until I reminded him. He must have seen lots of people in one day.

It’s a pretty common scheme in my town, it seems. Recently, my husband and I had an middle-aged, nicely dressed couple asking for similar help (lost train tickets and purse or something). My husband was pulling out his wallet when I declared we’d gladly walk them to the station and help them at the ticket booth. They refused and walked away.

I love helping people, but it can be done without rewarding straight-faced liars and manipulators.
McGrude

That would be comedic gold.