New Scam

I am writing to The Times not (for a change) to denounce rock ‘n’ roll, smoking, overpopulation or illiteracy, but to alert the public to an ingenious new scam.

On the afternoon of April 23, an exhilarating cool and intermittently rainy Saturday, I deposited my wife at an elevator in cavernous Beverly Center, and began looking for a parking space. The joint was jammed and jumping, and for a quarter of an hour I drove slowly around in huge ellipses, vainly seeking my niche. Suddenly my normally docile mount began to buck like an unbroken bronco. Stopping to investigate, I found my right rear tire flat as a pancake. I laid my suit jacket--with my wallet in the inside pocket--behind the driver’s seat and went to work.

It was not until that evening that I discovered, to my anger and chagrin, that the cash was gone from my wallet. While I was sweating over my jack, tire iron and wrench, some despicable brigand had reached in, removed about $100 cash, and replaced the billfold in the pocket, leaving (thank God) the credit cards, IDs, etc.

When I went to a tire shop to have the flat fixed, I realized the diabolical genius of the scheme. My tire was beyond repair. It had been stabbed in the sidewall and terminated as surely as Brutus and his buddies knifed Julius Caesar. Knowing that I could not see him unless I happened to look at my right mirror, the thief had punctured my tire and, while I was absorbed in my arduous labors, surreptitiously relieved me of my currency. So I am out the cash and the cost of a new tire, but I have had a relatively cheap lesson. To paraphrase a contemporary maxim, one can never be too rich, too thin--or too careful!

MARVIN H. LEAF

Rancho Mirage