Weird scam attempt on my wife.

[tmleadr03]

Some guy just knocked on the door today and informed my wife he works at a body shop and her Trailblazer has "Black Mold" in it and it needs to be taken care of.


WTF? I hate being able to see the street from my house. I need a bigger property so they have to really work at coming to see me or the wife.

[clark]

Now that is indeed wierd, creative as hell on the scammers part. I think a lot of the crap going on is a sign of the times, the worse the economy gets and the fewer jobs available is certainly causing not only things like this but crime rates are going up as well. Kind of a sad world we live in right now and only hope this country goes back to common sense somewhere in my lifetime....

[tmleadr03]

That or he was casing the place.

[Great-Kazoo]

Some guy just knocked on the door today and informed my wife he works at a body shop and her Trailblazer has "Black Mold" in it and it needs to be taken care of.


WTF? I hate being able to see the street from my house. I need a bigger property so they have to really work at coming to see me or the wife.

Why did she open the door to a stranger?

Lic plate info, description of "salesman", time of day etc???

[Ronin13]

Why did she open the door to a stranger?

Lic plate info, description of "salesman", time of day etc???
This! Had a windshield guy call the other day, not sure how he got our number, saying he was doing his "yearly checkup" to see if we needed new windshields. Yes, the Dodge does, but I'll seek you out, don't cold call me! Asked him never to call us again, if we want to replace our windshield we'll find you.

[crashdown]

More info....
Does she have a black Trailblazer?
Has it been in a body shop recently?
If she has a Trailblazer, did he say how he saw the mold?
Seems a little "left field" for somebody casing your house. Usually they just ask for someone by a made up name.

[ray1970]

Mold? That sounds pretty serious. I hope she set up an appointment to have that taken care of. [Coffee]

[spqrzilla]

That's a new one, tmleader03. I'd not heard that one before.

[TEAMRICO]

Black Mold?

Sure it was not and old Obama Sticker??

JK.

[Roger Ronas]

"I'm growing the Black Mold for an experiment"

[BushMasterBoy]

Surveillance cameras and it could be a home movie...I don't care if they are banging on the door screaming "search warrant", I'm gonna look first through my cameras. Logitech Wilife camera is $48.95 on ebay, usb adaptor $6.99. Logitech Command Center is a free download. Your computer must run XP or Vista. Old computers are cheap. If you buy the Blue Iris software for $29.95, you can watch your house remotely and other shit too. NSA will probably be able to hack in and see your house too, but they probably are looking for terrorists instead. Nice thing is if it is a home invasion, you can preempt the violence by shooting right through your front door. I would probably start with buckshot and follow up with XM855...just my .02 cents

[cofi]

my friends restaurant was just the victim of a pretty clever scam.....

a guy goes in to his restaurant wearing nice clothes and asks the hostess for a manager that was not working at the time(larry) she brought out the on staff manager....the guy tells him that he was dining in the resturaunt 2 weeks ago and a waiter spilled wine on his shirt he said he spoke with larry (the other manager) and that larry had authorized him to go get it dry cleaned and bring in the bill and he would be reimbursed....so the on duty manager gave the guy 35$ out of petty cash and didnt really think too much about it

later on that day when larry gets there he explains that no waiter spilled wine on anyone and that he hadnt autherized this guy to get dry cleaning done.....so they call the dry cleaner to try to track this guy down and it turns out that someone had stolen a couple of books of blank tickets and had done this to DOZENS of restaurants that week

[Tinelement]

Wait!.....

I thought they banned black mold in Colorado???

[mikedubs]

Well...technically, bumper covers are "Molded Black" plastic...just sayin'[Coffee]

[mtnhack]

my friends restaurant was just the victim of a pretty clever scam.....

a guy goes in to his restaurant wearing nice clothes and asks the hostess for a manager that was not working at the time(larry) she brought out the on staff manager....the guy tells him that he was dining in the resturaunt 2 weeks ago and a waiter spilled wine on his shirt he said he spoke with larry (the other manager) and that larry had authorized him to go get it dry cleaned and bring in the bill and he would be reimbursed....so the on duty manager gave the guy 35$ out of petty cash and didnt really think too much about it

later on that day when larry gets there he explains that no waiter spilled wine on anyone and that he hadnt autherized this guy to get dry cleaning done.....so they call the dry cleaner to try to track this guy down and it turns out that someone had stolen a couple of books of blank tickets and had done this to DOZENS of restaurants that weekSomebody is bound to get the guy on camera and bust the guy. $35 is no biggie, but $35 * 20-30... That might be enough to get the police interested.

[anomad]

Surveillance cameras and it could be a home movie...I don't care if they are banging on the door screaming "search warrant", I'm gonna look first through my cameras. Logitech Wilife camera is $48.95 on ebay, usb adaptor $6.99. Logitech Command Center is a free download. Your computer must run XP or Vista. Old computers are cheap. If you buy the Blue Iris software for $29.95, you can watch your house remotely and other shit too. NSA will probably be able to hack in and see your house too, but they probably are looking for terrorists instead. Nice thing is if it is a home invasion, you can preempt the violence by shooting right through your front door. I would probably start with buckshot and follow up with XM855...just my .02 cents

Note to self, call before banging on BushMasterBoy's door.

I had all kinds of bullshit in my 'hood in Lakewood. I stopped answering the door unless I knew the person knocking or maybe if they were driving a big brown truck.

[cstone]

my friends restaurant was just the victim of a pretty clever scam.....

a guy goes in to his restaurant wearing nice clothes and asks the hostess for a manager that was not working at the time(larry) she brought out the on staff manager....the guy tells him that he was dining in the resturaunt 2 weeks ago and a waiter spilled wine on his shirt he said he spoke with larry (the other manager) and that larry had authorized him to go get it dry cleaned and bring in the bill and he would be reimbursed....so the on duty manager gave the guy 35$ out of petty cash and didnt really think too much about it

later on that day when larry gets there he explains that no waiter spilled wine on anyone and that he hadnt autherized this guy to get dry cleaning done.....so they call the dry cleaner to try to track this guy down and it turns out that someone had stolen a couple of books of blank tickets and had done this to DOZENS of restaurants that week

That is an old, small scale grift. Grifting has been around as long as people. Plenty of educational material out there, but like everything else in life, the best way of getting good at something is to get out there and practice... Oh, and everyone gets caught now and then. [Flower]

http://www.loststudies.com/1.2/art_of_grift.html

[theGinsue]

That or he was casing the place.
That was my first thought too.

Why did she open the door to a stranger?

Lic plate info, description of "salesman", time of day etc???

+1 This.


Sounds eerily similar to the "our apartment management sent me to clean your carpets scam someone here posted about ~ a month ago.

A co-worker (and member of this site who occasionally checks in) had a situation with a slight twist on the caret cleaning thing in Falcon last weekend.
His next-door-neighbor came by Saturday night & asked him if he'd noticed the tan Chevy Astro mini-van that had been parked on the side street much of the day; he hadn't. There were 2 guys & 1 woman in the van. At least one of the guys was dressed in a dress shirt & tie. At one point in the day at least one of them left the van & knocked on the neighbors door - he didn't answer it but he watched the person. Next, he knocked on my co-workers door - he didn't hear it so he didn't answer either. The guy then went across the street and the woman in that home opened the door. They found out later that the van guy offered "carpet cleaning services". She declined & the guy returned to the other 2 people in the van. They sat there until my co-workers neighbor got in his work HVAC truck and drove past them. He said the 3 occupants all turned and hid their faces from him. That was too suspicious for this guy & he got the license plate #, and put a call in to the police. He then turned around at which point the van took off in an obvious attempt to flee the area. He gave chase. I don't recall if my co-worker said they drove to the Falcon Safeway or Wal-Mart, but they parked and all 3 fled in different directions. One went into the store and the neighbor pursued into the store. The van occupant fled through the store and somehow got away. El Paso County Sheriffs Office has all of the info and believe these folks were either looking to get into the home and rob the occupants or would have provided an "estimate" while casing the home(s) to come back later to burglarize.

The moral: Unless you called someone to come to your home or you know the person, don't open your door for anyone.

[hghclsswhitetrsh]

Yup. Never answer the door. I always make people talk through the locked storm door. Glancing at them then the no solicitor sign and back and forth.

On a different note. I work residential hvac. People call us out we don't do surprise visits. I call when enroute, park in front of their house with a well marked company vehicle, walk up with company apparel and I still get asked for company ID. I do NOT mind this whatsoever. They're about to let a stranger into their home. I have one customer that requests me specifically yearly for maintenance on her furnace. I follow the same procedure mentioned above, she knows me by name and greets me at the door. And still asks for ID.

Moral of the story if they are supposed to be there, make the, prove it with ID. If they aren't tell them to leave a business card in the mail box and call them back if you so desire.

[Clint45]

Door to door salesmen are worse, in my opinion, than telemarketers or Jehovah Witnesses. You can hang up on a telemarketer, and the JWs will leave politely if you don't want to talk to them . . . but some salesmen will pound on the door and ring the bell for fifteen minutes . . . then come back the next day and do it again. I love it when you're walking out to your car and they charge you . . . I nearly shot some asshole for popping up from my blindside in my driveway while I was getting out of my car . . . fuckin' jerkoff wanted to sell me "a magazine subscription" . . . after dark . . . from a minivan packed with dirtbags that had out of state plates. That was even worse than the door-to-door panhandling crackheads wanting to "do chores" so they could "buy medicine for a sick child." I wish I had dogs I could feed these people to. I need a tall fence or something. The scarecrow full of arrows isn't working.

[kawiracer14]

This is why I always open the door a little and allow my dog to continually bark and growl at them while they try to sell me something.

[cstone]

Door to door salesmen are worse, in my opinion, than telemarketers or Jehovah Witnesses. You can hang up on a telemarketer, and the JWs will leave politely if you don't want to talk to them . . . but some salesmen will pound on the door and ring the bell for fifteen minutes . . . then come back the next day and do it again. I love it when you're walking out to your car and they charge you . . . I nearly shot some asshole for popping up from my blindside in my driveway while I was getting out of my car . . . fuckin' jerkoff wanted to sell me "a magazine subscription" . . . after dark . . . from a minivan packed with dirtbags that had out of state plates. That was even worse than the door-to-door panhandling crackheads wanting to "do chores" so they could "buy medicine for a sick child." I wish I had dogs I could feed these people to. I need a tall fence or something. The scarecrow full of arrows isn't working.

Get one of those "No soliciting" signs. Rude people are known to comply with written instructions [hahhah-no]

Life in the city and the suburbs... Once in a while people give you plenty of opportunity to dislike them.

[mtnhack]

Get one of those "No soliciting" signs. Rude people are known to comply with written instructions [hahhah-no] Life in the city and the suburbs... Once in a while people give you plenty of opportunity to dislike them.http://www.safetysign.com/images/catlog/product/large/F7382.png

[theGinsue]

Too bad that sign doesn't include home repairs (roofing, siding, lawn maint., etc.)

[mtnhack]

Too bad that sign doesn't include home repairs (roofing, siding, lawn maint., etc.)I guess I am lucky in that those are the only things I ever get approached for.

[Aloha_Shooter]

I don't generally have a problem with solicitors ... but then my doorbell burned out 3 years ago and I've never bothered to fix it ... [ROFL1]

[losttrail]

Some guy just knocked on the door today and informed my wife he works at a body shop and her Trailblazer has "Black Mold" in it and it needs to be taken care of.


WTF? I hate being able to see the street from my house. I need a bigger property so they have to really work at coming to see me or the wife.

She should have replied that she has "black mold" inside the brass casings of her .40 Glock (or other "black mold" propelled projectile delivery device).

[Stone83]

Black mold...
[panic]
I'm thinking you should obtain a firearm to protect your property/loved ones...
At least while that option is available....[obama]

[Irving]

Had an insurance claim on a pop-up trailer full of black mold. We couldn't even PAY someone to do an estimate on it.

[WETWRKS]

Wait!.....

I thought they banned black mold in Colorado???

I was told by my HOA rep that "black mold can't grow in Colorado".

1 Mold expert and a law suit later...

[JMBD2112]

That or he was casing the place.

exactly what I was thinking

[Jim B]

I need a bigger property so they have to really work at coming to see me or the wife.


I need a tall fence or something. The scarecrow full of arrows isn't working.

You guys are aiming way too low. A moat with a drawbridge would solve this problem once and for all.

[rockhound]

Black mold must be assault mold