Trying to be a good neighbour.

I am not a very gullible person, nor very na?ve, but I got scammed this week because I tried to be a Good Samaritan. In my defense I thought I was helping a neighbour. Since my face is in the newspaper every week, I am sometimes greeted by people who claim they know me. Then they admit that they only know me through my newspaper articles. Being recognizable puts me at a disadvantage when I meet people because I don’t know if a person actually knows me, or he just recognizes my face.

I was having a meeting at a restaurant in town, when a young man came up and greeted me warmly. He was wearing a mask, so at first I thought he was one of the junior doctors from IHK, but he then pulled down his mask and said he was the son of my neighbor. ‘Which neighbour?’ I naturally asked, because when someone claims he is your neighbour he could be the neighbour up the hill, or the one living below you, or some other person living along the street.

‘The one with the black gate,’ he replied. At this point I was still confused and should have trusted my instincts that I did not know this fellow at all. However, I do have a neighbour with a black gate, so I greeted him and then attempted to go on with my meeting. Later I realized that everyone has a neighbour with a black gate.

He then moved closer and whispered in my ear that he hoped to get my help. His story was that he had taken his mother’s Prado and it had leaked oil. He therefore needed to add five litres of oil, but he had no money. He had called his father but he was in a meeting, and then as fate would have it, he had bumped into me. By this stage I thought I had identified him as the son of one particular neighbour who had a number of grown up children. However, his story was still a bit garbled and I did not know if he wanted a lift home or if he wanted the money to buy oil. I engaged him in conversation about his father’s business, and he gave me vague answers. Perhaps I should have told him to leave at this point, but I thought I might be being mean. ‘How much do you need?’ I asked, to which he responded that he needed five litres of oil at 15,000 each – 75,000 in all.

I did not even have 75,000 in my pocket, but there was an ATM nearby, so I decided to go and get the cash (I was being a really good neighbor at this point). When I came back I found him hovering nervously at the front of the restaurant. I counted out 75,000 and then he asked for another 40,000 (to pay the mechanic). This made me more suspicious, but for some reason I still went ahead and gave him the money. As soon as he left I said to my colleague, ‘I’m sure I have just been scammed.’ The young man said he would meet me at the gate of his house as I drove home, so I stopped at the neighbour’s gate. ‘Do you have a Joel who stays here,’ I asked. ‘Joel?’ the gateman repeated. ‘There is no one of that name here.’ I hadn’t really expected anything else.

It was a relatively small sum, but it was a respectable haul for the conman. In retrospect I was stupid and na?ve, but like many human beings I am wired to err on the side of trust, not suspicion. I also meet a lot of people, and he was gambling on me accepting that he was my neighbour and so I would wish to help. Conmen either play on trust and the desire to help, or they play on the baser instincts of getting one up on the system, and getting something for nothing. In my case, when I meet anyone in future who greets me warmly, I will probably just look at him blankly, and I certainly won’t be helping him with any money!