Dear PoPville – Scammer Alert

Photo by PoPville flickr user Barflydc

Dear PoPville,

I’m writing because my coworker and I noticed a scammer that has been changing his story and moving around town. We were walking to work today (on K Street NW) and a short middle aged black man in a suit and tie stopped us. The man went into a long story about how he has a prescription he needs to pick up at CVS, but that it was $257 and he was $3 dollars short. Luckily, I noticed the man and got a hint there wasn’t something quite right.

This is similar to two different occasions I encountered with the same man. The first time he was on H and 11th NW by the construction site in a legit-looking maintenance outfit and tool belt asking for money to open the locker that stored his street clothes. My friends and I threw him a few bucks and kept moving. A few months later he was by Howard University at a bus stop on a cell phone trying to find bus fare. By this time I recognized the guy and told him to go scam someone else and he became extremely upset and started yelling at us as we walked away.

I’m not quite sure what we can do about this but I wanted to make sure readers were aware of this and to be careful. All three situations were most definitely the same person.

We’ve encountered other scams here, here, a big one here, here, here, and here.