Damsel in distress Leon Munson had a sinking feeling when he called the University Bookstore in Manoa on Tuesday looking for a woman he had "loaned" $40 a few days earlier so that she could replace a broken radiator hose.
in parking lot is
actually a scam
Police say several people have
been cheated by the same womanBy Nelson Daranciang
ndaranciang@starbulletin.comHe had already called the number the woman gave for her home telephone and was told there was no Angela Smith there.
When the bookstore director told him there was no Angela Smith who worked there, "I knew I'd been scammed," Munson said.
He was not the first person to have given money to a woman who called herself Angela and claimed to work at the bookstore.
"It started last summer. I'd say we'd gotten possibly eight calls asking for Angela Spivey. Two people actually came in looking for her," said Kaylene Mason, the bookstore director.
Furthermore, Honolulu police said at least another 15 people have been scammed by the same woman over the past year in parking lots all over Oahu.
The victims' stories all mirror Munson's tale.
They are approached in the parking lots of shopping centers or supermarkets. The woman claims to have some type of car trouble and needs $20 to $80 to have it fixed or have the car towed.
Munson said he was approached in the parking lot of the Pali Safeway. The woman told him a radiator hose on her 1998 Ford van was broken and that the service station down the road said it would cost $40 to replace. But she only had $12, and there was nobody to call.
"I told her I had been scammed many times before, but she said this was not a scam," Munson said.
The woman said she would mail him a check as soon as she returned home later in the day, and gave Munson an Ewa Beach address where she said she lives, a telephone number, her driver's license number, the van's license number and the number to the bookstore where she said she worked.
Munson was not convinced and left. But he drove around the block and thought he could temporarily fix the hose with duct tape. When he returned to the parking lot, the woman was still there.
The woman told Munson he would have to crawl under the van to reach the hose. She even lifted the hood to show him which one it was. But she said the people at the service station had already told her that duct tape would not work.
Munson then gave her $40.
"It does make me look stupid, but she was really, really good -- very convincing," he said.
Honolulu police received a dozen similar complaints in the past year through CrimeStoppers from people who did not wish to identify themselves and three reports from people who did, said Detective Letha DeCaires, CrimeStoppers coordinator.
Except for Munson, all of the complaints to police were from women. Yet all but one of the people who called the bookstore were men.
"Most of the people were embarrassed when they realized she didn't work for us. They just wanted to hang up," Mason said.
The woman appears to target middle-class, middle-age people who are compassionate, who want to help, and she asks for amounts that seem reasonable, DeCaires said.
"She seems to be honing her skills, getting better and better. She usually has all the answers," she said.
Police describe the woman as between 5 feet 3 and 5 feet 6 inches tall and in her late 20s or early 30s.