Scams

Luckily I have not lost any money or significant amounts of time to scams but they have been occurring. Thought I should document for humor and future avoidance. Apparently I look like a dumb person who will fall for their trickery but they haven’t gotten me yet!

 

Athens

I received the same scam in Athens 3 times from 3 different people. I told the story to someone last night and he said it was so obvious it was a scam but the imposters were pretty convincing so my bad story telling can be to blame. In all of these scams, the bad people start out very friendly and try to relate to my life by saying they have been to the states, have a relative in the states, etc.

The first time I was scammed in Athens, I was walking down a main road by myself around midnight. The road had many nice shops and there were plenty of people there at night so I felt safe. A man came up to me and asked what time it was. I looked and gave him an answer. He went on to introduce himself and tell me he was travelling from a Greek island by himself. When I told him I was going back to my hotel he was offended, as Greeks stay out late and so should I! He asked me about 3 times if I wanted to get a beer at a pub with him and I said no thanks each time. Some more talking and I agreed to grab a drink; it couldn’t hurt. We walked down one of the main roads in downtown Athens. And further and further and further. I kept asking how far his pub was, skeptical that he was telling the truth. Finally we came to a boarded-up store front and he claimed his pub had closed. He then tried to convince me to go to a strip club. My best guess is that these scammers get some $crilla if they bring strangers into a strip club. So I went back home and went to sleep.

2 more times the following day 2 older men started talking to me and kindly offered to show me a local bar with “music from around the world”.

Also in Athens, I think I observed a pick pocket at work. I was riding the subway to the airport on my way out and about 20 feet from me at one of the stops there was a lot of yelling and pushing between an older man and someone in his 20s. The transit security got them both off the train and I speculate that one was trying to get something out of the other’s pocket.

 

Rome

I was walking up a nice pedestrian-only alley on the way to the Coliseum and I came to a road so I pulled out my map to see which way to go. It was a quiet street and a man who was coming up the road in his car pulled over to the side of the road and told me the Coliseum was to the left (correctly assuming where I was trying to go). Then he proceeded to ask me where I was from and we chatted about what we both did. He claimed he was a “manager” for Armani and was going to be in Austin,Texas in a few months for a trade show. Then he told me he had some samples I could have if I promised not to sell them. He had a leather jacket with fringe that looked like something a cowboy might wear. He asked if I had a girlfriend, I told him yes, and he pulled out a large white purse. He went on to show me that he was running low on gas- he probably had a quarter of a tank left- and that he needed some cash because his credit card was broken. He took out a credit card that was absolutely trashed. It was bent in about 8 different places at different angles. Knowing how hard it is to break a credit card in half when they are expired, I knew this was not accident. I told him thanks, gave him a smile and walked off. He sped away.

 

Total scam count: 4

Athens- 3

Crete- 0

Rome- 1

Florence- 0

I will update this post as more scams occur 🙂