(Copyright 1999)
Bellman Communications
All Rights Reserved
RECENT TELEVISION PROGRAM:
A recent television program did an article on scams that are of particular interest to women.
SCAMS:
In one scam, a man comes up to a woman in a mall or shopping center and asks if she likes pizza.
When she says she does, he offers her $100 to shoot a commercial for pizza, but they need to go outside where the lighting is better. when the woman goes outside of the mall she is abducted and assaulted.
Another ploy is where a nicely dressed man asks a woman if she would be in a Public Service Announcement to discourage drug use. The man explains that they don't want professional actors or celebrities, that they want the average mother to do this. Once she leaves the mall, she becomes a victim.
In the third ploy, and the most successful, a very frantic man comes running in and asks a woman to please help him, his baby is not breathing. She runs out of the mall following him and also becomes a victim.
These have been happening in well lit parking areas, in daylight as well as night time, all over the country. The abductor usually uses a van to abduct the woman. The television show set up a test in a mall and 10 out of 15 women went out of the mall on the pizza and Public Service Announcement scams. All of them went out of the mall on the baby scam. |