Creative Scam Artists Find Their Marks on L.A. Streets

Recently I told the story of Marilyn Tiberio of Marina del Rey, who gave $20 to an attractive young woman who approached her in a Marina del Rey parking lot, told Tiberio she had lost her wallet and asked for gas money to get home to San Diego.

The young woman had alighted from a black late-model sports car with a small child in it. She said her name was Becky and gave Tiberio her phone number and promised to repay the money. Tiberio called the number a few days later and found it was the Long Beach Naval Depot.

A few weeks later, Tiberio was approached by the same young woman with the same story, this time near the Pioneer Boulangerie in Venice. She reminded the young woman of their first meeting; the young woman insisted she had mailed a check only the day before. Tiberio walked away, without getting her license number.

I have since received letters from other victims.

“Same gal,” writes Lorraine Hepburn of Playa del Rey. “Same late-model sports car, same color.” She was an insurance investigator. Her purse had been stolen with all her money and credit cards.

“Oh, how sad, I thought. What if that was me? Would someone help me?”

Hepburn remembered her New Year’s resolution: “Be a little kinder; help those in need.” But another voice said: “Hey, kid, you’ve been taken more than once.”

She did not give the woman anything.

A woman who wishes to be identified only as Patricia, of Playa del Rey, encountered the same young woman on Main Street in Santa Monica.

She told Patricia she was a paralegal, in Los Angeles for an appointment; her purse had been stolen and she needed money to get back to San Diego. “She was indeed attractive, poised and a hell of a liar,” Patricia says.

Patricia had only $13; she gave the woman $12. But she noticed that her car was a black 280ZX and wrote down the license number. When she read about Tiberio’s experience she called the Los Angeles Police Department, but they told her to call the Santa Monica Police, because the incident occurred in its jurisdiction. Patricia let it go at that.

Lila Lee Peschong of Tarzana tells a similar story. She and a friend were approached by Becky in front of Charley Brown’s restaurant in Marina del Rey. Peschong paid to fill the woman’s gas tank and her friend gave her several dollars. She was driving a Z with the same license plate reported by Patricia.

Becky is not the only one out there. Ron Rosen of South Pasadena writes that a man on a bicycle approached him in Bullock’s parking lot. He told Rosen his car was at his home, out of gas and that he needed money for gas to visit his dying father in Bakersfield.

Rosen said he would meet him at a gas station and pay to fill his tank. The man said his car didn’t have enough gas to get to the station. Rosen offered to get enough gas in a can to get the car to the station, where he would fill it up. The man became irate and left.

Yolanda Marquez of Venice reports that a clean-cut man approached her in a Venice parking lot and said that his children were waiting for him in Pasadena, but he was out of gas. He asked for a few dollars. She gave him $3. He thanked her and walked away.

Two weeks later the same man walked up to her in the same parking lot and told her the same story. Angry, Marquez told him she had heard his story before. The man huffed and puffed, denied he had ever seen her before and walked away.

“What’s so sad about all these experiences,” Marquez reflects, “is that they’ve made me so distrustful of everyone. What about the father who really has run out of gas? Or the mother, with the baby, whose wallet really has been stolen? Who’s telling the truth? I had always been ready to help someone in trouble, but now. . . . I cry for the loss of our innocence.”

Edmond L. Finucane also sees the other side of the coin. “The convincing argument for me is the Bible quotation of Jesus saying, ‘Give to every man that asketh of thee.’ (Luke 6:30). How do we know that our sincere, cheerful giving won’t at least partially convert the alcoholic or the odd scam artist who might be receiving it?”

I too am tempted to be bountiful, but I doubt that any alcoholic has ever been partly cured by booze money or that any scam artist has been reformed by generosity.

My attitude, now that I have been stung, is just say no. Jesus didn’t live in Los Angeles.