A man claiming to need help with his car bilked a student out of more than $150 on Wednesday morning, according to campus police.
The student said the man approached him about 11:45 a.m. in front of a fraternity house and said he was a university employee who needed help with his car battery. The man asked the student to drive him to an ATM machine at a 7-Eleven a mile away. Along the way, the man convinced the student to lend him money until they got to the ATM machine.
Let's stop right there. I was ok with this up until that last sentence. How did he convince the student to give him money on the way to an ATM?
When they arrived at the 7-Eleven , the man told the student the ATM machine was not working and could he take him to an ATM machine west of campus. Once there, the man said that machine also was not working...
Alright, seriously, this is ridiculous. One machine not working is understandable. Two machines? Convenient. Furthermore, there is at least one ATM on campus that was about two blocks from where the student initially found the con artist.
...and convinced the student to take him downtown, where he said he had a friend who would help him. Once they were downtown, the student told the man he needed to return to campus for a class. The man ran into a nearby parking garage and was not seen again. The student said he was not certain of the garage's location.
The student described the perpetrator as a slim black male about 6 feet tall and weighing 160 pounds. He had moderately long black hair that stuck out from under a white baseball cap with a green bill and was wearing a white T-shirt and old blue jeans. The suspect also was described as having brown eyes and very dirty fingernails.
This makes me worry about the undergrads at my university.
