Witnessing a Robbery Without a Gun?

My mom and I had been picking up a few things at the grocery store, and we were heading for the front checkouts. We approached the checkout with no other customers in line, but just before we got there, a man standing up at the front quickly moved ahead of us.

He was already closer to the checkouts than we were, so his getting ahead didn’t really stand out. But he had nothing to check out until he swiftly reached over and picked out a pack of gum off the candy shelf. Then he slid up to the counter just before we got there. That struck me as odd.

I mean, he had been standing up there for a minute, and then suddenly chose that moment to grab some gum. The move seemed timed to just barely beat us.

My mom and I sat our few items on the conveyor belt as the cashier rang up the man’s gum purchase. I saw the man pull out a twenty dollar bill to pay for the small pack, and he rambled on some idle chatter with the cashier. The memory of the scam pulled on me, over twenty years before, came to mind.

After getting his change for the purchase, the man asked the cashier if he could get change for another twenty, “while you’ve got the drawer open.” That set off my scam warning. I stepped a foot closer to the exchange, and watched what was going on. I decided that if the man asked for any other swap or transaction of money, I was going to speak up.

This whole situation just screamed “scam.” The grabbing a small item just before other customers came up, (so the cashier would feel rushed), the paying for the small item with a twenty, (to get a lot of cash on the counter), and the asking for another transaction, (to get more cash moving), and the continuous “idle chatter” from the man, (to keep the cashier from concentrating on the money), was a text book pattern for running such a scam.

You see, I’ve since learned some things about how scam artists work since my very first encounter with one.

But the man stopped the transaction at getting change for the twenty. He thanked the cashier by name (which he could have gotten from the boy’s name tag), and left the store.

My mom and I dealt with our transaction and walked away. When we got out into the parking lot, we both mentioned what we saw. My mom saw how I was suddenly very attentive, and she also suspected something strange was going on — the man just acted a little too friendly with the cashier boy. And he was a little too animated.

I mentioned how that looked so much like a scam, and I was watching and counting what was going on. There wasn’t enough money exchange going on, so I didn’t think the man got away with anything. If he got something, it couldn’t have been more than maybe five bucks in the change for the twenty.

I even thought that maybe the man had bailed on the scam when he saw me standing close and paying attention. After discussing it for a minute, I told Mom that I wanted to go back inside and warn the cashier, and maybe the manager about that guy. So we relocked the car doors and walked back into the store.

So as not to scare the cashier, I tried to be nonchalant and easy. I walked up when he wasn’t busy, and said, “Hey, I’m just a customer. I was in here just a couple minutes ago,” he nodded his head in remembering, “and I was wondering if you knew that man who was in line right ahead of us.”

The boy said, “Maybe.” His face went blank, and he seemed to pull back from me just a bit. He immediately went into full defensive mode, wanting to protect himself from trouble.

Crap, that’s not how I wanted this to go. “I’m just asking because he talked like he knew you, but I think he might have been trying to scam you.”

“Oh, Mr. Pearson?” the boy answered. “No, I know his daughter. He wouldn’t do something like that.”

So, the friendly chatter was just that. I mentioned to the guy that the man just was acting suspicious with his grabbing gum right before us, using a twenty to buy gum, and then trying to get more change for another twenty. The kid completely dismissed any chance that the man was dishonest.

I wasn’t convinced. The man could have intended to use the familiarity to get the scam to work better.

But I let the issue go. “OK,” I apologized, “sorry to have bothered you.”

Mom and I walked back out. We talked about the situation some more on the drive back home, and I’m still convinced that man was trying to work a scam. The whole situation was too perfectly arranged and executed to have been pure randomness. But, I also don’t think he actually pulled it off.

Bullgrit