A Familiar Scam Resurfaces, but This One Has a Sequel

Some months ago I was taken for $20 by a couple of appealing young panhandlers in a supermarket parking lot in Pasadena.

A tousle-haired young man approached me as I got into my car. He pointed to an attractive blond young woman sitting in a somewhat battered red compact next to my car.

He said that she was his wife and that she was pregnant. She had morning sickness. He had left his wallet in the car when they went to look at a rental in Sherman Oaks. They had had nothing to eat all day, and he had no money for gas to get back to Modesto. He had come down to enroll in UCLA. Could I help him out?

I gave him a $20 bill. “God bless you,” he said. “God bless you,” the woman called out from the car. He asked for my name and address and promised to return the money to me. I gave him my card.

As I drove away I began to have doubts. What man leaves his billfold in his car? Why would he be enrolling at UCLA in the summertime? Perhaps a summer course?

Wondering whether I had been a Good Samaritan or a patsy, I wrote a column about the incident and left the answer open. I received about 50 letters from people who had been victimized by the same couple, parting with sums from $10 to $100.

I sent the whole bundle to the police bunco squad, and within a few days they had caught the couple in a Westside gas station. According to detectives, they had been working their scam for at least two years, reaping thousands of dollars. Both were on drugs.

Their story had almost never varied. It occurred to me that the young woman had set a record for the longest human pregnancy. The young man said he was uneasy about my occupation, as stated on my card, and thought he’d better send me my money back. But he never did.

Now I have a letter from Marilyn Tiberio of Marina del Rey, who seems to have been the victim of a similar con in her neighborhood.

Tiberio reports that her nemesis was an attractive woman, late 20s or early 30s, well-dressed, who approached her outside Vons in Marina del Rey. The woman had just pulled up in a black or dark blue well-kept late-model sports car. A girl of 3 or 4 was in the car.

“She apologized for bothering me and mentioned how terribly embarrassed she was and how stupid she felt, since she had just done a dumb thing.”

The woman said she had stopped at the nearby 7-Eleven and, since she was going in only for a minute, she grabbed a couple of dollars from her purse and left it in the unlocked car, with her daughter. When she returned, of course, the purse was gone.

She said she needed money to go home to San Diego. She said she wasn’t sure she would give money to a stranger, if the situation were reversed. Tiberio was impressed by her honesty. She gave her $20. The woman asked for her name, phone number and address and insisted on giving hers.

Tiberio waited for several days. No check came. She finally phoned the woman’s number. She reached the Long Beach Naval Depot. She asked if they knew any Becky. They said no but that for several days they had had several calls a day for Becky.

As in my case, there are a few implausibilities. Have you ever known a woman to leave her purse in an unlocked car, or even a locked car, while she went into a store to shop? How many mothers would leave a 3- or 4-year-old child alone in an unlocked car? Or a locked car, for that matter?

But there is a sequel. About a month later Tiberio was about to enter the Pioneer Boulangerie in Venice when she heard, “Excuse me.” She turned and looked into the face of the same young woman.

The woman didn’t recognize Tiberio. She told the same story and asked for help. “I said, ‘Of course, just as soon as you give me the $20 I gave you the last time your purse was stolen.’ ”

Without batting an eye the woman said she had mailed the check a day or two earlier. “I said I couldn’t believe her gall and turned to go into the bakery.” The young woman started walking to her car.

Suddenly Tiberio realized she had neglected, once again, to get the young woman’s license number. She ran out of the store just as the woman was driving away, but she was not wearing her glasses and couldn’t read the number.

Tiberio urges her neighbors to beware.