Oxford scammer (?)

I have previously shared my encounters with scammers and con-men on the street, trying to get money or other stuffs, but mainly money. These posts are filled under the tag scam.

In general I would skip and ignore such things. Though I would seldom give such people asking for money a chance. This time it was in Oxford, England.

Within my brief stay at Oxford of around a week, random people asked me for small changes, 25p , 50p etc. I do not know how the city works, and if it is normal (I don’t think so), therefore I see this as a tapping method to see where is your wallet. Later, an accomplice of will carry out the main task.

I met a guy in Oxford who was originally from my city. It was our last day and we went to a good place to have dinner. After dinner we walked towards Balliol College where we were staying. It was around 9pm. Suddenly a frail young British woman (assuming from the strong accent) approached me and asked for some money. She looked helpless. Her story was she has to take a bus to meet her mother, and she doesn’t have money. I did what I do in my city, kept on walking without even slowing down. I had no intension to give any money to this woman.

Suddenly this guy, who was with me, stopped and told me “hey what do you say, should we help her?”, I told “ofcourse not!”. We talked within ourselves in a different language than English.

As the guy stopped, I also had to stop. Now the woman stood in front of me with her hands together, and she was crying. She told even if I don’t want to give her money, I can buy her a bus ticket. I told my man “let’s go!”. I think he just felt really bad for the woman. It’s not his fault, he is a kind person, I felt bad as well. As I have explained in my previous posts, not everytime we could go with the benefit of doubt.

He reached for his wallet and I stopped him immediately. I handed the woman whatever coins I had in my pocket, should be around 2 to 3 Pounds. Then she asked for some more from my man, as this is not enough for the bus fare. I just asked this guy to walk away from her. He was like, “maybe it is not enough …” and took out his wallet and got her a few more pounds, while a staggering amount of cash peeking out of his wallet.

I tried to get him out of this as quickly as possible. Finally we were out. She went somewhere.

Now, it’s not a big deal, as always, to give a few Pounds or Euros or tens or a hundred Rupees, but as far as I know this is one of the basic scams. Maybe she’ll get a drink or something else, or maybe she’ll buy food, or maybe she’ll really take a bus and meet her mother.

As I have mentioned before in the previous posts, most of these, in fact, almost all of these are scams, but there is always a chance of a genuine case.

It is important to keep an eye open for people in genuine need.