Alta Moda Italiana R.G. A Import-Export
Con artist trying to sell jackets ripoff Manchester Service Station Lancashire

Upon pulling into a Moto service station relatively near Manchester Airport, two Italian men in a blue Fiat Punto pulled into the car parking space beside my father, girlfriend and myself.

One of the men was quite young, probably late 20's to early 30's - dressed very well and clean shaven, while the other man (in the passenger seat) was a lot older, in his mid 50's to early 60's. The younger man introduced himself to us, saying he was from Milano, and this was his first time to England and it was "very good". His English seemed very weak at first, but began to improve drastically as his sales pitch progressed.

He said he was in England on a business trip, and had been involved in a Fashion exhibition. He said he and the other man had to catch a flight back to Milano that day, and they had some items left over from the fashion exhibition. He said that he liked to give any items he had left over to someone as a present, but he just wanted one favor in return.

He showed us three different Armani jackets, the first two were soft black leather jackets; which looked extremely good quality and were still wrapped in cellophane donning the Armani logo. He put the jackets halfway into our car from his, so that we could have a feel of the quality of them, and he told us to "smell the leather", which seemed to be of excellent quality.

He showed us an Armani brochure, which had pictures of the jackets he was showing us, along with their retail price; which was something like 900 Euros for one jacket, and 1000 Euros for the other jacket. He then said that he didn't want to have to take the jackets back to Italy with him, as he would have to pay tax on them. He said he would be happy to give us the two leather jackets, if we purchased one jacket from him. He then got out a light suede jacket, which also seemed to be of excellent quality. He said that he wanted 350 for all three jackets.

Upon trying to convince us to buy these items from him, he produced his passport, saying he had to go back today, along with some Airline tickets, which looked a bit dubious. He then told us he was in a hire car and things like that.

The idea of him showing us these documents was to try and authenticate his claims, but by him doing that... It just lead me to be even more suspicious. Why would someone produce all these documents, just to try and convince somebody to buy jackets worth over 1500 Euros collectively for 350, unless the items were fake.

We said we didn't want to buy the items, to which he didn't seem very happy, muttering something in Italian, then he drove off.
For this entire episode, the older gentleman did not speak.

Jimmy
Manchester
United Kingdom

Company: Alta Moda Italiana R.G. A Import-Export
Country: Italy
City: Milano
Address: Via Toledo, 28 Bis 20100 Cologno Monzese
Phone: 028891010

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