ONCE AGAIN AS Christmas approaches, the confidence tricksters and pickpockets are roaming the streets of down-town Kingston.
Sometimes they are successful in cheating unsuspecting shoppers of their goods and money.
Many are the tales of grief they have caused. Some people are even too embarrassed to relate them or report them to the police.
Although the police are out in large numbers patrolling the streets, some of the confidence tricksters and pickpockets are not going home empty-handed.
Last week a confidence trickster fleeced a woman of $1,000. The woman said she was on Princess Street, downtown Kingston, when a man told her he could not read and a man with whom he worked for many years died leaving him thousands of dollars. She said the man explained to her that he came into Kingston to find an honest person who could help him to invest the money.
The man said he had put the money in a plastic container and buried it under a mango tree because he did not want people in his district to know about his fortune.
MONEY FELL OUT
He told her that he lived in St. Elizabeth and when he came into Kingston he had $1,000 with him but when he put his hand in his pocket to get his handkerchief to wipe his face, it appeared the money fell out. He said he did not to have any money to pay his fare to go back home.
She said the man asked her to lend him the fare to go back home and give him her telephone number so he could contact her and refund her money when he returned to Kingston the following week. He said he would take some of the money he buried with him so she could show him where to bank it.
"I really believed he was telling the truth and so I lent him $1,000 because he was an elderly man. I was so shocked three days later while walking along Princess Street when I saw the man trying to fool an old woman. I stopped by to hear what he was saying and he did not recognise me. I asked him if he remembered me and he said no. I reminded him and I threatened to call the police on him and he quickly walked away," she said.
She said she told a policeman what had happened and the policeman said if she saw the man again she should call the police.
It is an offence to trick people out of their money. A person who commits such an offence can be charged with obtaining money by means of false pretences and can be fined or jailed if he/she is convicted.
Do
you have a problem? Is something bothering
you? Write to 
