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For those of you who don’t know me, I live in the Atlanta area and I ride the MARTA (Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) to work everyday.  The MARTA is Atlanta’s public rail system and as a daily occurance I see panhandlers doing their best to swindle people out of their money.  Because I see this everyday and because I like to analyze the events that go on in my daily life I felt it would be an interesting exercise to write down my observations of the different ways people panhandle.

I use the term “panhandler” here because I’m not quite convinced all these people are homeless.  While homelessness is a serious issue to be discussed at a later time, the best way to help someone who is homeless is to give to a local charity like the United Way et al. rather than just give people handouts in the street.  The reason for this is many homeless people are crippled by addiction and the money given to them usually goes to feed that addiction rather than help them back into society – but I’m digressing.  I also use the word “swindle” because I’m quite convinced some of these people could hold legitimate jobs.

At this point, I’ve broken down the tactics used by panhandlers into 4 main categories:

1. The Salesman
2. The Unlikely Disabled
3. Please Give to This Charity
4. P.O.B. (Plain Old Begging)

There may be more as I’m sure I haven’t seen all the different cons these people have to offer but for my “quick” analysis, I’m going with 4.  Each of these categories has subcategories that I will touch on as I explain the different techniques.

The Salesman

I rather like this one.  It requires effort on the part of  the individual to actually DO something to earn their money.  Unfortunately it’s what they sell that’s troublesome.  For instance, the other day while I was on my daily train ride an individual was selling packages of brand new socks for a mere $2 each.  Actually that’s quite a bargain!  Although I was tempted to participate, doing so would only encourage this kind of behaviour.  Of course it begs the question, “where did this guy get a giant garbage bag full of brand new socks?”  The answer is quite simple…  he stole them.  Probably shoplifting, but I wouldn’t want to presume that without knowing all the facts.  I suppose he could have bought them somewhere at a highly discounted price and is in turn selling  them to us with a small profit in there for his efforts.  Somehow that REALLY seems unlikely.

The other technique employed (and the one that got me once) is the sale of an entirely free newspaper.  An enterprising individual will obtain newspapers that are freely circulated, like the ones you find at the entrance of a supermarket,  and charge a nominal fee of $1 or so for his services of bringing the paper to you.  Again, this is almost legitimate.  With a little extra effort this person could actually obtain a legitimate  job doing something similar and probably make a few more bucks than he’s making with this scam.

The Unlikely Disabled

What do I mean by unlikely disabled?   Simply that it is unlikely the person who claims to have a disablilty actually has that disability.  For instance, occasionally I run into a person who holds a sign saying they are deaf and could I please help them out with a few dollars.  All the while this person is making hand gestures that he is trying to pass off as sign language.  Now I’m not claiming to be an expert in sign language, but I did know the signed alphabet and a few other hand symbols at one time and with a little knowledge you can easily spot the fake.  It’s just like saying you may not be an expert in English but if you see “ipso callum orisn denntim” you can say “gee, that looks fake.”

Not only is this individual preying on peoples sympathies, he’s insulting all the disabled people I meet everyday who go about their lives in a very independant and productive manner.  There are a few people I regularly run into on the MARTA who are blind.  Not only are they not asking for handouts, they don’t even ask for assistance getting around the train platform.  I’ve often thought of pulling the old “Brady Bunch” briefcase trick just to see if the fake turns his head.

Please Give to This Charity

By “this charity” they really mean them.  This little gem manifests itself usually in the form of a collection for a high school sports team.  The person has some xerox document with the picture of a building on it attached to a large manila envelope.  I see this one in many different places but now I see it on the MARTA as well.   A few simple questions can help flush out the realcharity collectors from the fake ones.  Here’s an example.  I was at Home depot not long ago and there were 3 young men, about high school age, collecting for a high school baseball team.  I asked them what school and team it was for, who the principal was, and what specifically the school planned to do with the  money.  They answered all 3 questions quickly and as far as I knew accurately (although I had no way to check the principal’s name).  Even if it was a scam, they were very well prepared and had done some level of contingency planning.  That alone is deserving of a couple of bucks.

On the other hand you have someone walking through a MARTA train.  Judging by their age they’re clearly NOT in high school.   After not being able to answer quickly what school it was for I was done.  I just ignored the rest; it was clearly a scam.  At least put some effort into it if you hope to get a few dollars from me.

P.O.B (Plain Old Begging)

This technique garners the least amount of respect from me.  Really, I’m supposed to give you money just because you asked me.  Really?  I don’t think so.  Sure, you see some different flavors of this go around.  I’ve had people tell me they work at Lowes and don’t get paid until tomorrow and just need a few bucks to hold them over.  Others come with the barraging tactic in which they repeat the same few words over and over again in rapid succession, “all I have is a dollar, all I have is a dollar, all I have is a dollar.” so on and so forth.

Sometimes you’ll get the person who asks for a strangely odd amount of change like 87 cents.  Who goes around asking for 87 cents??  My reply is no of course; not because I don’t want to give it to him but because I don’t generally have exactly 87 cents on me.  Maybe I should keep 87 cents on hand for the next time I see him.  I’m sure that would blow his mind if I pull out a wad of ones and count out 87 cents because that was what he asked me for.

At any rate, this is my way of trying to make sense of the world around me.  You can learn a lot by simply observing the environment you’re in and applying some simple analysis to it.  If anyone knows of any other scams they’d like to share with the world feel free to leave them in the comments section.  Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!