scamming karma

vincenzo and me always had an angle. we were always looking for a scam. we were the scam. we were "the sweet little deal". we lived for months on end off walmart and target running age old scams.

we'd call a place and tell them we bought a boombox and it wasn't working but we'd lost our reciept and ask if we could return it.

they'd ask if we payed by credit card.

we'd tell them we paid cash, and they'd tell us they could only return cash on an item without a reciept if it was valued at under "x" dollars.

then we'd meander into the store and i'd ask the sticker guy to point me to where the children's clothes were. when he pointed i'd walk a bit away and point in the worng direction (but oinly slightly) and say "over there?"

he'd walk over to me and point me the right direction. while he was walking ove rto me vincenzo would go behind his little pulpit and grab two return stickers.

then i'd walk off that way and meet him by the women's magazines. he';d hand me one and we'd each split to find two items int he store of roughly the amount they would return with little hassle and place the return sticker on it and walk it to the counter saying we'd bought it for a gift for someone who already had it or that our aunt had gotten them the same thing or that the cat was afraid of it or some other story so random no one would question it and they'de give us cash. he'd be behind me in line and we'd meet back int he car forty or a hundred or two hundred dollars richer. we'd paid rent this way many a time.

sometimes we would walk barnes and noble lots or target lots and look for reciepts left behind.

anything of value we take in, using the same scam to get the sticker, then find the item and return it. if it was for too much then we'd have to fuss a bit.

on occasion we'd get some cowboy of a returns clerk who wanted to put up a fuss. at which point we'd ask for the manager and tell the manaager that the item had upset our mother and that she had been whining all day once she saw it so we brought it back. we'd ask if they knew what it was like to have their mother on their back about some stupid little thing they owned, they'd immediatly give in and give us the cash.

if it was by check we'd have to wait twelve days (of course it never mattered if the check cleared or not they had no way of telling.) and then run the scam.

when we bought groceries, we bought half of what we needed, we filled tow identical carts, then, after checking out i would leave the recipet on the coin changer, vincenzo would grab it and march through with the cart. if anyone asked about why we didn't have bags we told them we didn't want them (of course we'd specially requested no bags at the counter the first time) then point to the checker who rang us up and say "ask him, he just rang us up." the checker would nod becsuae it had only been a few seconds and we';d load both carts into our car and head home.

at christmas, we would find the credit card recipets ont he ground and claim our card had been stolen (and what a fucking thing to have happen at christmas!) so we needed to return the items to pay for what the theif had charged up on it. they always gave in.

you'd be surpirsed what you can get if you just ask for it right.

the rule about reciepts was that if we found a crddit card regular season, we had to ruturn the item anyway and charge it back to the card so the person got their item for free. whoever had originally bought it anyway. i mean, who would call in and say, "excuse me, you didn't charge me for this thing i bought." even if they did notice, not one in a thousand would do that.

we'd run the "antfarm" scam. we'd go into wal mart and find an ant farm, pull it out of the box and ut it back in pet food where no one would find it for at least a few hours, then fill the box with whatever we wanted, cd's, cd players (which had the alarms that could be switched off by leaning around the register and tapping the dark button below the register) and then dlipping the wire and dropping it into the ant farm box. then we'd purchase the $14.00 ant farm and get four or five hundred dollars worth of merchandise.

if we ever did purchase something, we immediatly went in, grabbed another off the shelf and returned it so the itme we now had was free.

with cigarettes, vincezo'd appproach the lady at the counter and ask her to help my grandmother to the restroom and when she walked off i'd pocket a few packs then hide a few up in front of the register. i'd take the stolen packs to my car and then walk back in and buy a replica of what i'd hidden around front of the register at which point i slipped them around the front of the register and then into my pocket. i walked out, put the new packs in my car then go back in and grab the ones i'd originally stashed around front and say i'd forgotten them. she'd nod politely, remembereing me and what i'd bought but not thinking how she hadn't noticed whether or not i'd pocketed them and walked out.

occasionally some asshole would check us, but we only had the three packs and the reciept to go with them plus the girl's story to corroborate.

we lived this way. we knew a hundred ways to get a free lunch. a dozen ways to get a free cab ride. ten ways to get someones ATM card and pin and use it for quick cash.

one night we did way to much acid and decided that we had a lot of bad karma coming our way so, like everything else, we decided to scam karma.

we would buy two rolls of pennies and then walk around malls placing them heads up. this way someone would find them, and good luck or no good luck, they would have a better day and this was good karma. sometimes when we knew we were going to pull of a particularly harsh scam we'd plant the pennies in advance, sometimes as much as ten or twelve rolls, to "build up good karma" so we wouldn't be fucked when karma made it's rounds.

i don't scam anymore. haven't in years.

don't miss it. i do miss being silly enough to think you can scam karma. you'd be surprised what you can get if you just learn to ask for it right.

2003-01-07 | 10:29 p.m.
0 comments so far