Last evening I opened my door to an out-going, young man who introduced himself as "Shawn". He used a street in the neighborhood to say his mother resides there and that he was attending the Univeristy of Houston. He stated that the Houston Chronicle had written a story about the university band going to London and how they needed to raise money to pay for this trip.
In order to raise money, he was selling children's books to be donated to Texas Children's Hospital and the more books he sold the more points he would accumalate that would go towards money for the trip. Neighborhood kid, local university, local newspaper, famous local children's hospital... How can you not help? Not only did I help, but I pointed out neighbors with kids who would more likely be sympathic to his cause.
Within 30 min. One of my neighbors came to tell me that she had given as well but when she went online to see how she could use this as a tax write-off she saw that it was a scam! A few of us decided to cruise the neighborhood in search of him and we found him, called our neighborhood constable and not only got our money back, but he was in custody and hopefully all the other neighbors he'd scammed throughout the day had their funds returned as well.
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