Last Friday, June 18, 2010 I went shopping at the Borders Bookstore in Mission Valley off of Mission Center Road. As I was pulling out of my parking space, yes my car was actually in motion, I heard a knocking on my driver side window (I didn’t see the person coming because I was looking over my shoulder as I backed up). Thinking I had dropped something I rolled down my window for a young man who said, “My sister and I ran out of gas can you please give us some money?”

Normally I would have handed him a few bucks, but I had already been approached only weeks before for the same exact thing in the very same area of Mission Valley. A friend of mine was approached twice in the same week in the Target parking lot in Mission Valley for the same exact thing. Apparently it is one of the latest scams!

So far the culprits have been young (either late teens or early 20s) and they seem to be targeting people in parking lots in the Mission Valley area near the Target parking lot and the Borders/Old Navy/Marshalls parking lot. They use the same line every time, that they’ve run out of gas and need some money.

Shoppers beware!

Also, in the same day while shopping with my son at Albertson’s in the East Village I was approached by a man who wanted me to give him $40 cash for his $40 of Food Stamps. This is illegal and there is a high probability that the Food Stamps were counterfeit. Shoppers beware!

In hard economic times people get desperate and do unethical things; it’s hard to know when you’re being scammed and when someone just needs a helping hand… Be careful and give it a second thought before opening your wallet.