I just wanted to share with the neighborhood community an experience with a scam that I just had tonight. I was driving to pick up a friend from the airport just before midnight and was heading down NJ Avenue when a man in a van pulled up along side of me and started shouting to me that my front passenger's side wheel was wobbling funny and looked like it was about to fall off. He told me that I needed to pull over and suggested that I drive back to the gas station at Rhode Island Ave to do so (I was only about a block from there.) He followed me there and then told me that he's a repair man just coming of work from Pohanka Auto Services and after much fast talk and warning about how dangerous the situation with my car was, offered to fix it right there for me for a couple of hundred bucks - much less, he assured me than I would pay if I called AAA and had it towed to be repaired somewhere. I was dubious and didn't fall for the scam, but had never heard of this one before and so the dire warnings about my car did shake me. As did being marked for a scam when driving alone on a rainy midnight. Once I got home, I Googled it and discovered that the "wobbly wheel scam" is a thing. Thought I'd let other folks in the community know that there is a guy in a van driving around targeting women alone at night. Trust your instincts, folks. Particularly women out and about alone at night.
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Monday, March 25, 2013
Bloomingdale resident encounters "wobbly wheel scam" along New Jersey Avenue NW last night
See this message received last night:
This same scam happened to me in Baltimore!
ReplyDeleteThis just happened to me last night around 8:30 pm at Rhode Island and 1st NW. It sounds like the same guy. At the light a guy in a white/beige minivan shouted that my front wheel was wobbling and looked like it was about to come off. I pulled over and he followed me. He introduced himself and said he works as a mechanic at a dealership and he sees these things all the time and it is really dangerous, blah blah blah. He tried to convince me to pull into the gas station where he could adjust it for me. Said I would save lots of money over calling a repair truck or getting it towed. Sounded like it would just take about 15 minutes to do. He quoted me $275 to adjust it. I told him I don't have any cash on hand and he said the gas station has an ATM. He was very nice and quite convincing. I probably would have fallen for it if his estimate wasn't so outrageous! I decided to take my chances and just drive home slowly. I googled this when I got home and realized it is a pretty common scam usually perpetrated on women and the elderly.
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