A Good Scam
Today I went to the hospital with a friend, whilst she had her appointment I went outside and just watched people coming and going. Three men came, all with clipboards, Romanians I believe. They proceeded to accost people going in and coming out of the hospital doors, myself included. The clipboards had a photo copied form, at the top a wheelchair and pictures of various other disablements. The men were claiming to be deaf and dumb, and very well rehearsed they were too. However I had seen and heard them talking together underneath one of the archways, so had another English man who was waiting outside. The men claimed to be collecting money for charity but they were only targeting the obviously none Spanish people, mostly English. I honestly cannot believe how naïve people are, many of the accosted people looked at the form on the clipboard and just handed over money, we watched in amazement as one woman gave a five euro note and the man wanted ten ! Within less than 10 minutes they must have collected over 70 euros, then they walked down to the car park where another man was waiting in a car, handed over the money and then back to the hospital doors. The man I was talking to and myself attempted to tell some of the people being accosted it was a scam but they just shrugged their shoulders and handed over the money. This carried on until the security guard came out at which point they three men ran for the car park, no doubt heading for somewhere else where there are lots of people. I fail to understand people, every week the local papers warn about these activities, every week they are told that doing this is illegal in Spain, but it doesnīt appear to sink in. Itīs bad enough with the beggars sitting outside every supermarket with a board (all written in English of course) that they have no job and 3 to 6 children, not illegal unless they accost you, almost all are eastern Europeans. As for having no work, well if they sit all day outside supermarkets waiting for people to give them money they are not going to find any work are they? Not forgetting that they change shifts too twice a day.