Yahoo!'s Trinity Park Crime forum has been flooded in recent weeks with stories about people exploiting residents' benevolence-and wallets.
In one post, Durham District Sergeant Dale Gunter warned local residents that "along with the approaching holidays comes the scams.... After all... when better to hit people up! You tend to be in a better mood and much more willing to give."
Such was the case in early September, when Mai Nguyen, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her husband were approached at the front door of their home in Trinity Park by a man claiming that he needed help jumping his car. Nguyen described the individual as a black man in his forties.
Her post described an elaborate ploy by this visitor to con the couple out of $20.
The man told Nguyen and her husband that he was their neighbor and that his pregnant wife was going into early labor, but that his car was stalled at the gas station on Main and Morgan Streets.
Nguyen's husband drove the man to the gas station, but when he got there, "there was no wife and no car," Nguyen said.
"The man then went inside and apparently talked to the manager," she added. "He said his friend picked up his wife, but he still needed $19 for the gas."
The man gave her husband his phone number and promised to repay him, but when they called later, the number was invalid, Nguyen said.
"It's shocking. He was a very good actor," Nguyen said. "It pulls at your heartstrings-how can you not help? And now you want to distrust everyone who comes to your door."
The Nguyens, however, are not the only victims of such a scam.
While discussing the incident with other passengers on the Robertson bus, Nguyen said she discovered three others to whom something similar had happened.
"He does it in waves, and his story varies a little," she said. "After my post [on the Trinity Park Crime Yahoo! group] I got emails back from people, and apparently, he's been doing it for years."
East Campus dormitories and the students housed there are apparently viable targets for the scams, too.
Freshman Michael Dechert said he was approached one Saturday outside Gilbert-Addoms dormitory by a well-dressed black man who said his car had broken down around Main Street.
"He said he was a Duke alum, class of '01, and that he needed $26 for a cab," Dechert said. "I don't carry cash anyway, but I asked him, 'Oh, where did you stay freshman year?' But he said it was so long ago he didn't remember. When he didn't know his freshman dorm I knew he was lying. In retrospect, it wasn't that great a story."
Local police encourage residents to exercise caution and report the incidents.
"Pick up the phone and give us a call," Gunter wrote in a post. "We'll stop by to see what the real deal is."
Although the incidents are distressing, Durham police said they hope that residents post their experiences on the Yahoo! forum in order to prevent others from being victimized.
"I guess all in all, this is a cheap lesson to learn," Nguyen said.
"I hope we don't run into him again, though," she added. "My husband is pretty mad."
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