You Scammed! Don't Be Hooked by This Lame Line

Con men know that it isn't how much sense their line makes, it's how they sell it.

A 30-year-old Milwaukee woman bought the line, the hook and the sinker.

She reported Monday that she was the victim of a scam perpetrated on her by a man who approached her at about 1:30 p.m. at the bus stop north of at .

She said the suspect, a black man between 35 and 45 years old, 5-feet-8 to 5-feet-10-inches tall, 150 to 180 pounds and partially bald, asked her if she would hold a paper bag that he said contained $2,000, while he went across the street to withdraw more money from a bank.

He told her he was from Haiti through Florida, and she said he had an accent.

He gave her a convoluted and patently illogical story about how the bank would not give him more money if he already had the $2,000 with him – as if that would matter – but she was already hooked.

He told her he would reward her with $200 from the combined funds when he returned, but then asked that she pay him a trust collateral for holding his cash – in the amount of $200.

The woman said didn’t have nearly that much, so he suggested she go to an ATM and get it – which she did, in his presence.

She said that when she got the $200, she started to put it in her wallet but the man grabbed it, along with the $21 she already had. He said they needed to “keep the money together” – and it still did not occur to the woman she was being conned.

She said the man kept her money as they walked back to the bus stop, handed her the paper bag, and walked off toward North Mayfair Road.

The woman said she waited a full hour before she began to suspect that he was not going to return, then she finally looked in the bag she’d been holding. It contained a wad of crumpled newspaper.