Gypsies

I have heard from a little birdie that there are some people out there that want to hear about Gypsies.  Well, I feel that it would be a great time to talk about them since we are heading into gypsy season (explanation coming in the post).  There are different kinds of Gypsies out there today and all the ones that I am going to talk about are criminals.  First, let me distinguish the between two types:  Gypsies and Travelers.  Gypsies have an Eastern European heritage with no real country of origin and they even have their own language, while Travelers are exactly the same in their scams, but are deep into their Irish, Scottish, or English heritage.

I say that these two groups have the same types of scams because I am going to explain what will happen over the next few months as the better weather approaches.  For the sake of ease I will just use Gypsies as my examples.  Gypsies have their own culture and traditions which is not a bad thing in most cases.  However, in this case they thrive off of scamming people, usually the elderly.  If you have ever heard in the news of a people pretending that they are the water or electric company to enter a house and burglarize it, I guarantee that it was Gypsies.  They do this by distraction.  While one or two people distract the occupant in the front of the house 3 of more enter the rear of the house to steal.  It is always well orchestrated and fluid so no one knows what happened until it is too late.

From a very young age Gypsies are taught to identify houses where older people live.  They do this for two reasons: 1) the elderly are more trusting of people that appear to be working in official capacity, and 2) elderly usually have a lot of cash and valuables in their house.  It is important to spread the word about these scams.  If there is any question that someone in your neighborhood actually works for the water company or electric company, etc call the police.  These criminals rob people of millions of dollars every year.  They live in very specific areas of the country and travel to commit these crimes.  When they do they bring children along as young as 11 to help them commit these crimes.

There is another form of scam that this group of people commit as well.  Many Gypsies will go door to door, especially to the elderly, and offer free estimates for work, or to do a repair for so cheap that no one would pass up the opportunity.  The common scams of this nature are roof and driveway scams.

With a driveway scam the gypsies will normally look for a blacktop driveway that needs touch up.  They will give a great deal and instead of spending a few days on resealing the driveway they will coat it with oil to make it look nice.  Unfortunately the opposite effect is created.  The oil will degrade the driveway to a worse condition over time.  By the time this is noticed the criminals are already on their way to the next city and the victims have very few details to give to the police.  What may cost the Gypsy a few bucks for a can of oil and and few house of time will reward them with a couple thousand dollars.  But the owner of the house will be out that money and more when they need the driveway to REALLY be fixed.

The roof scam in the San Francisco Bay Area usually only goes one way.  A free estimate is offered to a home owner.  The crook comes into the house and pulls some deteriorated wood from his pocket after the "inspection" and tells that same homeowner how they need to work on the roof TODAY.  A great price is offered.  The Gypsies will normally stay in the roof most of the day hammering nails into the same board to make it sound like they are working.  Then they get paid for basically hitting 30-40 nails into the same 2'x4' in the roof.  The other scam with the roofs has to do with coating the roof for the snow and if anyone wants to know about that please ask.  In the end the best thing to do is to make sure that anyone that comes to your house is licensed and to research them.  Nothing needs to be done THAT day.  If they are that insistent, then it is because they want to get in, get your money and get out.  You can always find out if some one's license is real by contacting the state contractor's licensing board.

Hopefully this is enough information to start off with.  I will get into fortune tellers, hi-tech gypsies, and their culture more in later posts, but I thought that this would be a great starting ground as we head into the better weather.  Because gypsies to have home towns that they live in about 4-7 months a year.  The rest of the time these gypsies travel outside their hometown radius to commit these crimes.  It may not seem like much, but they are responsible for a least $900 million/year in thefts through these cons and they are getting better all the time.