sidheshooter
Member
Answered a knock at the door to find two young females (17-20 or so?) who were selling magazine subscriptions–supposedly to earn money for cosmetology school, with the top seller alledgedly winning a contest to travel to an Island or something. Uh, yeah sure... but I don't mind listening to a pitch; heck, earlier in the day I let my car get soaped and sprayed by a valley youth group raising bucks for something or other.
I don't think anyone here needs much detail; I will say though (after the pre-entry interview) that one of them immediately asked to use the bathroom ("Nah, let's just have a seat right here and get on with your presentation, it shouldn't take that long").
Suffice to say that my requests for info on the parent company were not met with satisfactory answers, so that was that. I did get to pry a bit about their backgrounds, what they hoped to get out of their "sales" careers, etc.
Once I politely gave them the boot, I took a quick trip to google where I found that this is an incredibly common scam and, as I sort of feared/gut hunched, the young crews are sadly part of the victim side of the equation.
Make no mistake, paranoid that I am, I was also checking to see if there was any web documentation correlating "magazine sales" with casing the joint, but it really does appear that these kids were at least telling the truth about the transient nature of their "jobs".
I called the business line for the cops with descriptions, in the however unlikely hope that an interception might yield a van/crew leader with no permit, and maybe get these kids a wake-up call.
I guess the reason I'm posting such a mundane non-tac happening is to a) alert any who may not have encountered this specific scam to the likelihood that the ladies may well be victim/perpetrators, and not just "perps" (though google quickly told me what they might be hoping to find in the bathroom; bottles of 'scripts in the medicine cabinet, most likely).
As well, the benefit of having means and skills to take care of one's self also means that sometimes the more "tactically minded" person can take a little bit more from the risk side of the ledger in order to possibly be of assistance where it might not balance out for another to do so.
This is all just one opinion on the topic from one guy, of course, I'd mostly just be open to hearing from anyone who knows more about this wide-spread racket in detail.
I don't think anyone here needs much detail; I will say though (after the pre-entry interview) that one of them immediately asked to use the bathroom ("Nah, let's just have a seat right here and get on with your presentation, it shouldn't take that long").
Suffice to say that my requests for info on the parent company were not met with satisfactory answers, so that was that. I did get to pry a bit about their backgrounds, what they hoped to get out of their "sales" careers, etc.
Once I politely gave them the boot, I took a quick trip to google where I found that this is an incredibly common scam and, as I sort of feared/gut hunched, the young crews are sadly part of the victim side of the equation.
Make no mistake, paranoid that I am, I was also checking to see if there was any web documentation correlating "magazine sales" with casing the joint, but it really does appear that these kids were at least telling the truth about the transient nature of their "jobs".
I called the business line for the cops with descriptions, in the however unlikely hope that an interception might yield a van/crew leader with no permit, and maybe get these kids a wake-up call.
I guess the reason I'm posting such a mundane non-tac happening is to a) alert any who may not have encountered this specific scam to the likelihood that the ladies may well be victim/perpetrators, and not just "perps" (though google quickly told me what they might be hoping to find in the bathroom; bottles of 'scripts in the medicine cabinet, most likely).
As well, the benefit of having means and skills to take care of one's self also means that sometimes the more "tactically minded" person can take a little bit more from the risk side of the ledger in order to possibly be of assistance where it might not balance out for another to do so.
This is all just one opinion on the topic from one guy, of course, I'd mostly just be open to hearing from anyone who knows more about this wide-spread racket in detail.