This was a new one on us…We consider our self street wise since we have been traveling in Europe since 1999 and never been “lifted of any money etc” but this last trip was very interesting. We are walking down the sidewalk by the Tiber River in Rome. A nice car with a well dressed gentleman pulls over and asks directions to the Vatican (Italian accent but speaks good English). My husband, who tries to help folks out, walks closer to car and tells him the direction. The gentleman thanks us and asks us where we are from? We say America, he asks what state? We say GA he says he knows of Atlanta because he has been there several times. He explains that he is a sales rep for Calvin Klein and shows us his sales catalogue. He says he is mad at the Romans because he can not use his “bank card” which he flashes and needs to buy gas (which he indicates on the car instrument panel)…he wants to thank us for our kindness by giving us a “free gift”… he just happens to have two leather jackets (which he shows us) that he was going to give to clients but now he is mad at the “Romans” and just wants gas. He hands us the coats and asks if we can help him with gas money? My dear husband offers him 20 euro but he says he needs 50 – 100 euro and we say we do not have that much. He then changes his mind on the “free jackets” and dives off in a hurry!!!! Well, you may read this and say we “we just fell off the turnip truck” but he was very slick to say the least and it all happened so fast and sounded very convincing!! The lesson is not to talk to any one even those who seem legitimate! We now figure he would have been very happy to lift our wallets ect. If he had been able to reach them!!! Have you heard of this one before?

yes, the same happened to us in 2003 near the Forum ( on a side street).

This is a famous scam on the Champs Elysee in Paris, too, where the swindler is a Milanese who has been attending a fashion convention and it is the mean Parisians who won't let him use his bank card.

Amazing how old and how traveled some old scams get.

This one reminds me of the time two fellows offered me a fur coat in New York "almost for free."

Seems they had been making deliveries from their van (notice how these people always have wheels), and they had two extra fur coats they could not account for and were afraid to turn them back to the shipper.

Yes, they were gorgeous coats. For only $100...but just a second...we will put it into a box for you...so back into the van they pop and are back in a second, looking left and right, and hand the pigeon the box.

Only later does the pigeon find the coat has been switched and they have a coat made of genuine alley cat.

For many years, there was an Italian used to trawl the motorway service stations on England's M6 with this scam.

His story was that he was on the way back from a fashion industry exhibition, and he had this jacket...

The first time he came up to me, I knew there was no exhibition he could be coming back from and politely told him to go away. Three months later he came up to me again, and I told him in English to piss off, and started calling the police. His reply (which I suspect he assumed I wouldn't understand) sugested I <i> fa'n culo </i> , which seemed an odd assertion of innocence. As my reply (<i> Senti, cazzo, so bene... </i began, his tirade stopped and he scarpered. I couldn't catch his number, but a number of friends agreed they'd also come across him.

Is it something in the pasta that makes Italians specialise in this?

This brings a smile to my face, as it reminds me of a much less slick guy on a mountain road in Italy many years ago. We were parked in a rest area in the mountains in Italy. Our car had American forces plates. This man came up and opened his coat to show us these watches. Really, truly!

He was the stereotypical con man!

We weren't remotely interested, but to be polite, we just said we didn't have any money. The man then offered to trade a watch for some gas coupons. (American forces had--and probably still have--coupons which enable them to buy extremely cheap gas.)

Rosie, our tall, athletic friend from Idaho, decided we'd been polite long enough and told him to beat it.

Yep, we too dodged this one in Rome a few years ago.

Besides the usual Italians who propose leather coats out of the back of their car in Paris (the trade show is over and it is too much trouble to carry the coats around and all the way back to Italy), we had a very sad German on avenue George V for about six months. He had been robbed and had no money or credit cards, and he and his family had spent last night sleeping in their car. Can you help and give him some money to buy gas to drive back to Germany? He sounded so honest that just about everybody in my office fell for it the first time. But he was back day after day after day... He didn't have a good visual memory either, because he asked me about 4 times.

On several trips to Naples we were accosted by a Scandinavian woman who was looking for us to buy her a ticket to Rome because her passport had been stolen and the embassy in Naples was closed.

I was amazed that nobody had been able to help her in nearly two years !

Please! Pay attention to detail. The embassy is in Rome. Maybe there is a consulate in Naples. If we want to learn how to scam, we have to be credible.

Well quite frankly anybody scammed that way, at least in my opinion, deserves what they get.

Obviously nobody is going to give you something for nothing...we see this type of scam all the time wherever whether it be in New York, London or Rome.

As a famous first lady once said, just say NO like in NOOOOOOOOO (have you recently gotten e mails from people telling me they need help in getting money out of their country or whatever; I wonder how many people fall for that one).

Understand, it's easy. Just say NO.

I can't believe people will pull this stuff but it is good to know other Fodors have heard of it also. It makes me mad just to think about it!

Hi aj,

We had the same experience in Rome in Nov 2001. We were polite to the point that he wanted to give us a coat, then we cut him off and walked away. Looks like the Ante has been upped - we were only offered one coat....