Geetanjali Krishna: Conned at the ATM!

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

“Why is it,” said a friend at a dinner party, “that people get conned by the same tricks over and over again?” He was referring to a beggar woman he sees everyday at the Bhikaji Cama Place red light, who shows a medical prescription from AIIMS to people in cars, crying that she’s no money to buy medicine. The number of people who are taken in by her story, he said, is amazing. Evidently, she plies her trade everyday, none the worse for her supposed inability to buy medicine which she declares will save her from certain death.

An aunt piped up, “Well I was recently taken in by a new ruse…and at the end, I lost not just several thousand rupees, credit cards and more, but also felt really stupid for having been taken in by them!”

Here’s what happened. She was in the car outside an ATM in Gurgaon, where her husband was withdrawing some cash. He left the money with her and went off on an errand. Suddenly a young fellow knocked on her window: “Madam, you’ve dropped quite a lot of money outside your car,” said he. My aunt hadn’t even set foot outside, so she told the young man the money wasn’t hers. A couple of minutes later, another man gestured: “there’s a whole wad of notes — maybe you dropped them coming out of the ATM!” This was a possibility, my unsuspecting aunt reasoned, and she got out of the car to see.

The wad was certainly thick, but it was of ten rupee notes. “These aren’t mine,” said she, “but perhaps the car park attendant has dropped them…” The man shrugged, “I’m late for an appointment — could you please ask him?” Standing outside her car, my aunt hailed the car park attendant. When he arrived after five minutes, he stared puzzled at the wad of notes. “They aren’t mine,” said he. My aunt couldn’t leave the car unattended, and didn’t have the keys either. When she explained this to the car park attendant, he suggested, “let’s call the traffic policeman across the road. Maybe he can tell us what to do.”

The cop duly noted the amount (a trifling one, by the way, which looked so large only because of the small denomination notes), their names and contact numbers. He promised to look for the person who’d lost his money. The car park attendant went off, and my aunt felt that warm glow that comes from doing one’s duty as a good citizen.

By then, her husband arrived, and they got into the car to leave. That’s when my aunt realised her handbag with all the money they’d just withdrawn, was gone! “I didn’t leave the car for a second!” she said, “how could this happen under my nose?” “You couldn’t have paid attention to the door on the other side…” said her chagrined husband. They hailed the traffic cop again and told him what had happened.

“Madam, how could you fall for such conmen? Don’t you know they wait outside ATMs for people with more money than sense,” he said righteously, muttering that people like her made a poor cop’s life so tough. My aunt was stung: “you were right here when it happened,” said she, “why didn’t you caution me earlier?” The car park attendant who’d sauntered up to enjoy the show, agreed with the cop, and they both glared at my poor aunt.

“Nothing came out of FIR we’d lodged of course,” she said, coming to the end of her narrative, “so I just had to accept the fact that I’d been gypped…but at least the tricksters chose a novel way to gyp me!”