An old scam has come back to Prince George’s County parking lots recently, with the recent arrest of four people that police said scammed a woman out of well over $30,000 in cash last week.
It’s called a “pigeon drop scam” but it’s not clear why the victim is called a pigeon. But the victims approached in public are usually older, and police are hoping children will have tough conversations with their parents before they lead to even tougher conversations.
“This is a conversation we should all be having with our parents or our grandparents,” said Lt. Robert Weaver, who leads the financial crimes section within the Prince George’s County Police Department. “There are multitudes of scams that all prey on the elderly community, and this is just one of those.”
In the most recently publicized case, the victim was approached in a parking lot in District Heights and asked about a big bag of money the suspects — who have addresses listed in Alabama and Tennessee — allegedly found.
“The ploy was that they didn’t want the money (or) the serial numbers to be traced. ‘So I can’t just give you this money right now, it could be traced and you could get in trouble,'” said Weaver. “‘So we’re going to deposit this money into an account so that we can then withdraw it and get different serial numbers, so that this money, when we finally give it to you, that it can’t be traced.'”
The four suspects were arrested on Oct. 25 in Clinton, Maryland, as they were approaching another older person in a different parking lot.
“The only common denominator in all of these scams (is) that they’re targeting our elderly community and they are using some type of immediate threat or immediate gain,” said Weaver.
And there’s always urgency involved, whether someone has to act fast to make money, or do something quick to avoid getting in trouble.
“Our average age of the victims have been targeting these scams is 74, which is significantly higher than the average age of the victims in most of our financial frauds and crimes,” said Weaver. “But they’ll target an elderly citizen, usually by themselves in a parking lot, most likely a shopping center.”
He said the suspects arrested — James Davis, 77, of Birmingham, Alabama, Connie Williams, 64, of Birmingham, Alabama, Mary Daniel, 59, of Antioch, Tennessee, and Kenneth Gooden, 36, of Birmingham, Alabama — could be connected to similar crimes all across the country, including in California and Illinois.
Police are still looking into whether other cases on their radar are connected to them. Since the arrests were announced, detectives have heard from several other people around the area who came in contact with the suspects, though none of them fell for the scam.
“We’re all going to encounter people that we don’t know in our day-to-day interactions,” said Weaver. “But when those interactions introduce something of monetary gain, or those interactions turn to talk of a transfer of money or account information, those should be huge red flags that everyone’s aware of.”
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