Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge Old scams remembered

An earlier posting about people allegedly fiddling electric meters started me thinking about some of the small scams I have encounterd in the past.

1) The guys in the ship yards used to make blank coins roughly same weight as 50 pence pieces and would trawl the local pubs buying ciggies out of the vending machines.

2)The folk who worked in the pubs would take some kiddies plasticine into work and use a 50 pence piece to make a mold and freeze water once again scamming the ciggie machine.

3) I worked as a jeweller and fashion at one time was for folk to wear 1oz ingots well some of the crooks found out that an ingot could be hollowed out and filled with lead. Gave the approximate weight but the value was nothing compared to what they were selling for.

4) The false hallmark was also quite common a ring or piece of chaep jewelley would be cut and a hallmark inserted thus pushing the price up.

6) Fake watches replicas of quality watches being sold for silly money as the real thing

7) When colour printers first came into being for computers currency was being photocopied in great quantities.


Each locale must have had there own peculiar scams what were yours.

I worked for a time at a DUI school in downtown Miami, where all the parking is metered. The homeless folk figured out that coke can tops could be used in the meters to get 2 hours on them. Their scam would be to find a person trying to find a parking spot, direct them into an empty space, pop a coke can top in the meter, then ask the person for the "two dollars" that they just put in the meter for them (25 cents for 15 minutes, 2 hours = $2.00). It worked like a champ for the most part..

One funny story was when one of our instructors, an off duty undercover police officer was arriving to work. One of the homeless guys directed him into a spot and did the coke can top thing. Upon asking the officer for his two dollars, the officer replied "Thank you, but I didn't ask for you to put anything in the meter for me" and continued to walk into the building. The homeless guy (completely unaware that his mark was an undercover police officer), upset that this guy was stiffing him yelled out "Hey, you know that lots of stuff happens to cars down here, and nobody knows who does it!". The officer stopped and paused for a moment, turned around and yelled back "Yeah, and I'm an undercover Police officer, and did you know that a lot of homeless people are found dead down here and nobody knows who did it". The homeless guy threw up his arms, yelled "It's cool, It's cool, no problems here man!" and walked away rather quickly.

PS: Several years later, they changed the meters to the new digital ones which put an end to this particular scam.

Cheers,
Brad

Here there was an ice house where you put a coin in and a block of ice would slide out. The guys figured out you could reach in and pull the door open and free ice would slide out to cool the beer.

The first Pac Man machines if you hit them hard between the coin slots it would rack up games. It made the coin thing move inside as if you had put money in.

Can't think of any more but I'm sure I missed some.

Chipped digital tv receivers, xbos, ps2 etc

Again a shipyard one. A guy used to walk home through security once a week with a wheelbarrow full of sawdust from the carpentry shop, this was for his pet rabbits, pigeons or whatever.
He was actualy nicking wheelbarrows.

Back when soda vending machines first started to take paper bills a friend of mine figured out or was taught that if you took that clear plastic "packing" tape & attached about 2 feet of it on both sides (only about 1/2 inch or less of contact on the bill)... the machines would pull the bill in, give you your frosty beverage of choice... spit out change

then all you had to do was pull your bill back out of the machine via the 2 feet of tape...

I've got one word for ya here Eric...Amway!

And that reminds me of a these three guys I worked with years ago. They all roomed together at a beach house in Manhattan Beach California. All three of them were constantly searching for the next way to get rich quickly. One of their attempts was at being Amway "distributors". They lost their shirts.

Another was through this one "company", which during the last time(the early 1980s) when the price of gold and other precious metals skyrocketed, they sent their hard earned bucks to this one "company" located in Dallas Texas, whereupon this "company" told them they would keep the gold they had purchased in their safe for them. A few months later, Texas state authorities opened said safe and found nothing inside. They lost their shirts again.

And yet still not learning their lessons, another time these yo-yos somehow got entwined with some "company" supposedly making perfume. After sending this "company" a good chunk o' change, this "company" sent them some packets full of some magic powder and some petri dishes, and told them to just add milk to it and grow the cultures in their home. And once it completely stunk up their abobe, they were to send the those cultures back to the "company" and they'd then receive "big buck" in return. Yep! you guessed it. They lost their shirts in that one too!

And the irony about this whole thing is that they once told me that the beach house they were renting was up for sale for about $190,000 bucks at the time. I told these three yo-yos that maybe they should consider pooling their dough and maybe buy the house instead of blowin' it on these "investments". Of course they passed on that idea.

Fast forward about three years, and that same house was going for over $400,000. And nowdays I'm guessin' it's value is well over two million bucks.

(I guess it all boils down to what ol' W.C.Fields is famous for saying, huh?!..."You can't cheat an honest man!")

8 track players

jh

DVD copy protection!

this happens all the time on the market . guy pitches oppsite me with this "wonder cleaner" cleans ovens at a stroke. has a oven door thick with burnt crap. little rub off it comes
has 10 20 people round him sells loads of tins 30min starts again .you see it with your own eyes

what you dont see is him putting gravy browning thick sauce on with a brush and putting blow torch to the door. has the same door every time

only comes every few months works round the markets

Hey dwight.... If yer buddies are interested I've got a few bridges for sale. Ha!!

One of my very first jobs in high school was working at a Mobil gas station in LA. At that time, the credit card 'machine' and cash box were located near the pumps on the island, since this was before the 'self service only' type stations we have now in most states.

One night, I'm working the pumps and a Caddy pulls in. A big, well dressed black guy steps out and asks me to add gas. I do so, and we get into a conversation where he mentions he's a pro footballer. Being young and gullible, I believe him in awe and surprise that I get to wait on a genuine celebrity. (The fact I'd never heard of him notwithstanding). I finish gassing up his car, take his money, and give him his change. He then starts with, 'Can you please change this twenty to a ten, and five, and five ones?'

This led to me making more change and then more change and then he left.

The guy was a quick change artist, and I still don't know how the scam works so effectively.

My cash box was very short that night, and the owner (who was a jerk to begin with) of the station virtually accused me of stealing the money. He gave me the choice of making up the shortage or being fired.

I quit the next day out of pride.

And I disagree with W. C. Fields!!!

Sorry Kevin. I've lost touch with those guys.

But five'll get cha ten those three probably already have the deed to that one span which connects Brooklyn to Manhattan!

(the island of Manhattan that is...NOT Manhattan BEACH!!!)

Guy I used to work the night shift with, would bring in his gas meter and attach it to a hoover and rewind the clock!! Never blew up his house, is there no justice?

Man! Now THAT sucks!!!

In US money, a penny is slightly larger than a 10 cent piece. When I was in high school, they had vending machines in a small shelter that dispensed apples, oranges and small tins of fruit juice for 10 cents. So, some kids would cut pennies down in the metal shop class and use them in the machines. These machines had several chain driven columns of plastic bucket bits that would be run around one step and the bottom bucket would be tipped to dump its contents out the delivery slot. Well, one day someone cut a penny a little out of round and it stuck so the apple juice column kept going and dumping the wee tins faster than they could be removed. Eventually, they backed up and one fell onto a contact strip, shorting it out and starting all the columns going. Apple, grape and orange juice, apples oranges and pears were dropping all over the place.

Pay phones at the time were made so that dropping in the money would enable the dial for making outgoing calls. It didn't take long to figure out that the dial operated a make/break switch at a certain rate. So, the poor kids would pick up the handset, wait for the dial tone and tap the receiver switch at the correct to dial the number they wanted. The trick was to give it one more tap than the digit you are dialing.

You can cheat and honest man, but you can't kid a kidder

Years ago, there was a TV ad that would run late at night and during wrestling for a "wonder spark booster". They had a '50 Packard straight 8 with the hood removed (easy to do, it opened from either side and lifted off if you released both latches) and attached this "spark booster" between the distributer cap and the coil wire. Then, with the engine idling, they removed 7 plug wires one at a time and the engine kept running. Well, Packards were luxury cars that had such a heavy flywheel and crank to make them run very smoothly (the only way you could tell a Packard straight 8 was still running at idle was to look at the oil pressure gauge) that they would do that anyway. Sometime later, one of the scam debunkers that were popular on telly at the time cut one open and there was nothing but a 1/2 inch spark gap inside. It "worked" by keeping the spark from the plugs until the coil output peaked. Poor people had been doing the same thing for years, cutting a plug wire and taping it back together with a gap to help keep the plug from fouling from a worn valve guide or bad ring.

When I was a dumb kid, my friends and I used to raid the pop bottle machines, late at night. There were two old bottle machines in our area that dispensed the bottles from a row behind a glass door that open from the front, bottles stacked up on top of each other vertically. We would take our pocket knives out and punch the caps on the end of the bottle, then shake the bottle in its spot and stand in front of the spray that came out and try to catch it with our mouth . Of course, a lot of it wound up all over our face! In retrospect, I'll bet a lot of people were really peeved in the morning when they would buy the bottle half empty and flat! (I try to think about this when I cuss kids today and their pranks)

One of my associates told me this one For those that remember the pay phones that did not have the metal covered wires (from handset to phone), they used to have plastic / rubber coated ones. If you took a pin and poked through the coating, it would hit the wires. Once it hit the wires, you would take the handset and touch anything metal. This would get you a dial tone...no money needed. Phone companies figured this out and covered the wires with a metal cover.

Back at school, one of the vending machines had a digit missing when the prices were dialed in so a Twix cost 5p instead of 45p. As soon as me and a couple of mates realised this, we were in there first thing every break, empty the machine of twix's and sell them in the playground!

Shipyard scam.

15 or so yrs ago when I was working at Electric boat ship yard. A pipefitter was stealing 1/4 inch copper tubing by wrapping it around his chest and putting a coat over it.

One night he wrapped a little too much a little too tight.

It was about a 1/4 mile hike up a very steep incline to get from the wetdocks to the main gate.We called it "Heart Attack Hill" because from time to time somone would colapse on the way up.

So the last trip the copper laden crook made up the hill.
He passed out, just inside the gate. The guards came rushing out opened his coat and found about a 100 lbs of copper tubing. He didnt die but was arrested and later fired.

I used to work for a dodge dealership as a lot guy while i was going to school. I just parked cars all fancy, and jumped curbs with 4X4's. So it was my job to get everyone dinner from mcdonalds etc. I had a buddy who was the manager in mcdonalds down the road so I'd take everyones order with their cash, and go down the street to get everything for free at mcdonalds..ahha

of course i wasnt telling the salesmen so they just kept giving me tons of cash, telling me to keep the change, and i was getting everything for free.

So after a couple times i got greedy and started pushing the salesmen to get mcdonalds when they wanted wendys or soemthing different, so i finally told them i get free food down at mcdonalds and they all laughed their asssses off. So i worked out a deal that if they ordered mcdonalds i'd get them half price everything and still get it for free and pocket half the loot. Of course this meant getting WAY more food than necessary.

So I ended up pushing it to far cause I was ordering like $80 worth of food. The order would always start with 5 big mac meals supersized, and 3 20 piece nuggets, and then 5 parfaits, 5 supersized vanilla shakes, 5 apple pies, misc. random cheeseburger, random chicken sandwich no mayo, etc.

when i'd order the girl taking the order would get all ticked off cause the order was huge and around dinner rush.

so that lasted for maybe a month or 2 going maybe twice a week..and my buddy cut me off finally for being a greedy ******..haha....he still gave me all the "free big mac, etc." stickers you peel off the cups, so i was eating free fast food for the next 2 years..ahah

IT FELT GOOD TO SCAM THE CAR SALESMEN THOUGH..AHHA

She said she was pregnant...

Turns out she was what the Russians call Cykobitch!