Some people get pi$$ed when
Some people get pi$$ed when you talk about shoes in a barefoot running forum, so I guess all of this will be as far off topic as one can get but I'll justify the post by remembering that Gypsies did have a long standing tradition of being barefoot while living amongst shodsters. Almost makes me want to take up shoe wearing!
I spent the better part of 2010 proselytizing barefoot running, now I have two additional causes: Reminding people to watch for early signs of Alzhiemer's and other dementias as well as for Gypsy scams.
This warning is not to scare people, but to remind everyone how prevalent and dangerous these scams can be:
http://fraudtech.bizland.com/senior_alert_letter.htm
This next one is a link to TV news story that shows clearly how one business person may be willing to give up a quick buck in order to do the right thing, while another is able ignore the obvious scam:
http://www.nwcn.com/archive/61203312.html And this, from 2005, the same clan that got my dad (his Gypsy was from the Williams clan) And here we thought spammers were a threat!
01-15-05, 10:34 AM
Ring ranged from Upper Darby to Florida
THEY ARE YOUNG, beautiful and filthy rich.
And cops say these sexy sirens made their money the old-fashioned way: by stealing the hearts of lonely old men.
Their trap was a brilliant one, and it almost always worked:
They turned on their charm. They visited and called their new elderly friend. They went to dinner and to lunch. They chatted away their loneliness, and even talked about their victims' dead wives.
Then, crying crocodile tears, the young vamps told these vulnerable men that they were very sick - so sick that they only had weeks to live.
One woman curled up on a couch feigning pain. She said only a miracle, a new liver and hundreds of thousands of dollars would save her.
And, for years, police say these women, some of whom lived in Philadelphia, all related by blood or marriage, have pocketed millions of dollars from vulnerable widowers to pay for their lavish homes, cars and jewelry.
Cashing their checks at a Center City check-cashing agency, they used the money to buy waterfront homes in South Florida and mansions in North Jersey.
And here's the best part of their evil scheme: many of their victims were too embarrassed to call police.
Police suspect that the women may have victimized dozens of other men.
One of the darlings, a woman known as "Cooter" who worked as a fortune-teller out of a parlor near 3rd and Market streets in Philadelphia, has been arrested, along with two other members of the gang, for allegedly stealing $314,000 from an 75-year-old Upper Darby man.
Sandra "Cooter" Anderson, 28, Paula "Peaches George" Marion, 29, and the man who helped run the operation, Sonny Stanley, aka Al Tan, 22, were charged in September with theft by deception and criminal conspiracy in connection with the scam.
But their alleged scheme soon unraveled, as detectives in Upper Darby and Philadelphia tracked the checks cashed in Philadelphia to victims in several states.
Six women have been arrested and a seventh is being sought, police said yesterday. Police say the members of the group told them they are part of a clan of Gypsies. The leader or "king," as police call him, often arrives with a bundle of money in a suitcase to help bail out those who get caught.
They often pay just enough restitution so that the charges are dropped, and then move on to other victims, police said.
All of the suspects have been released on bail, police said.
Just this past week, a check from another elderly victim was cashed at the same check-cashing agency in Philadelphia. Police have not named the agency.
"They have done this for years and pass this skill down to others in their family," said Philadelphia Police Officer Louis Sgro, an expert on Gypsy crime.
Sgro, who helped crack the case by linking it to about a dozen other similar crimes, said the women hang around shopping centers where they approach elderly men who are alone and not wearing wedding rings.
In Florida, they've used lines like "I used to know your wife's nurse," or they knock on widowers' doors, saying they want information about the neighborhood.
"It didn't hurt that they were pretty," said Capt. John McGinnis, commander of Philadelphia's Major Crimes Division.
"These men, out of the goodness of their hearts, gave these women their life savings," McGinnis said.
One of them, Meyer Ginsberg of Delray Beach, Fla., admitted he was duped.
"I was a little vulnerable," Ginsberg, 87, told a Florida newspaper last month.
He explained that he met Rosanna Stanley just as he came to the eight-year anniversary of his wife's death.
Stanley and another woman asked to borrow $250,000 for an operation. He gave them $20,000.
"I gave them the minimum, [and] I'll put it to you like this: I didn't call the police," Ginsberg told the Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale.
Stanley, of North Miami Beach, and Gina Stanley, of Hollywood, Fla., were charged last month with defrauding Meyer and four other Palm Beach County men out of about $2.2 million. All of the men's checks were cashed by Sonny "Mandingo" Stanley in Philadelphia, police said.
None of the Palm Beach men said anything to authorities until they were approached by investigators. Detectives in Florida figured out the scam after a Florida man was going over his dead father's estate and found three checks for over $200,000 that had been cashed in Philadelphia.
The victim from Upper Darby also does not want to be identified, said Detective Lt. George Rhoades of Upper Darby police.
"His family doesn't even know he is a victim," Rhoades said. The trio posted bail and returned $100,000 as restitution to the victim.
Rhoades said suspects in these kinds of crimes are tough to keep in jail, because they use different names and travel up and down the East Coast.
"They are like ghosts, you can't get a hold of them," Rhoades said.
He credited Upper Darby Detective Charles Missimer with helping to break the case.
According to the affidavit, the Upper Darby victim told police in July that he had been scammed by two women, one of whom claimed she needed $314,000 for a liver transplant.
The woman, later identified as Anderson, said she needed to have it in two days because the perfect match donor only had two weeks to live and she needed to pay for the operation to lock in the donor.
She wept, and showed the man a letter from a doctor which detailed the cost, the affidavit said. The victim agreed to help her, and in exchange, she agreed to pay him back using the proceeds from a real estate transaction she was waiting to complete.
A week later, the victim called Mount Sinai Hospital in New York to check on the woman's condition. He soon learned there was no operation and no woman by that name at the hospital.
In addition to Anderson and the Stanleys, others charged in connection with the case are Lisa Rico, 33, and Sabrina Williams, 43. Susie Williams, 31, is still being sought.
