The Fight Against Crime: Notes from the Front : LAPD Taking Blush Out of Being Swindled

Many are fleeced but few are complaining. They are just too embarrassed.

They are the victims of street scams, who are afraid to talk because they think they will look naive--at least in the Latino community, where half of such crimes occur citywide, police say.

That makes con games one of the most underreported crimes in the city--with probably 80% of victims simply keeping quiet about what happened to them, say Los Angeles Police Department bunco detectives.

So, in a move to remove the stigma that victims feel, police now say that if you report such a crime, they won’t tell anyone--not even your wife--although the district attorney may want you to testify in court.

Although no guns or violence are used, con games can still have deadly consequences.

Recently, for example, a Los Angeles man in his 60s who lost $14,000 in a scam was so devastated, police said, that he didn’t tell his family. Soon after, he committed suicide.

“I talked to him on the telephone one day and he was supposed to come in to see some pictures (of suspects), and when I called him the next day, the police were already there” to handle his suicide, said Detective Robert Ramos of the LAPD bunco squad.

“They have such mental anguish,” Ramos said about the victims.

There are several ways for the unsuspecting to lose their money--or whatever else they have.

Swindles that target Latinos, conducted in Spanish, go by names such as Latin Lotto, the Charity Scheme, and the Gold Bar, sometimes called the Diamond Scheme.

Police say a typical ruse, which usually nets the criminals about $3,500 to $5,000 per scam, works like this:

In the Diamond or Gold Bar Scheme, the con artist poses as a poor person who has found “diamonds” or “a gold bar” which he says fell from a vehicle or was accidentally dropped during an immigration raid.

The con artist approaches a victim and says he doesn’t know what the valuables are worth. Enter an accomplice, pretending to be another stranger, who convinces the victim that the deal is too good to pass up.

The first swindler offers to sell the valuables to the victim for a price far less than their supposed value. When the victim hands over the cash, the con artists disappear, leaving their pigeon with a brass bar or a handful of diamond-like zircons.

The other ruses are similar: in the end you are out your money.

Con artists target other Spanish speakers from Woodland Hills to Pacoima, at banks, Social Security offices and parking lots. If an ATM is nearby or a place where senior citizens gather, Ramos said, you are likely to find swindlers there, too.

“It is like fishing for these people, they find their favorite spot and fish again,” said Ramos, adding that one spot is targeted for a few months and then the hustlers will move on.

Ramos knows a lot about the bad guys, too.

The swindlers are following a rich tradition, employing scams passed on by older con artists to younger criminals, hand-picked to carry on a legacy of thievery.

“There is honor among these thieves,” Ramos said. “They look for (apprentices) who are very trustworthy, someone who can play the role and has the gift of gab.” They learn to act naive, lost or very poor, eliciting either sympathy or greed on the part of the victim.

These new recruits go through a “screening process,” said Ramos, and must have previous criminal experience and prove they can handle police if questioned.

For the past six years, Morris Dondick, 70, has taught English as a Second Language in Pacoima. Each year, he noticed, students reported being swindled in street scams.

“One of them bought what was supposed to be gold bars for $7,000 on the street” from a con artist and accomplice, Dondick said.

“She told them she wanted to talk to her husband first,” Dondick said. “They sort of intimidated her into going to the bank right then.”

Dondick wanted to do something about it and added a lesson in street smarts for his ESL course, the main lesson being “if it is too good to be true, it probably isn’t,” he said.

“In the beginning, I asked the class if any of them had been victims of (con games) and a lot of them just sort of looked down with wry smiles,” Dondick said. “They are very reluctant to talk about it.”