Friday, January 6, 2017

Honor Among Thieves?


Here is another story from my son. He wrote about it in a letter when he was still in prison and I just never got around to posting it.
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I was eating lunch the other day with my friend in the prison cafeteria when another guy came and sat with us. This guy said he was going to start a class after the 1st of the year on how to invest. We listened and said we would like to take the class.

Then he asked about some details like if we ever owned houses. My friend said he still owned a house in the city.The guy told us how in his class he was going to teach people how to turn $10,000 into $1.2 million tax free in 7 years!

He told my friend that if he wanted to they could meet at the library Sunday and show him how he could take a mortgage out on his house and use the money to do this while he is in prison. My friend said he would meet him Sunday and talk about this.

We all left. My friend and I walked and talked for a while before going back to our housing units. We both said we were going to check this guy out because this sounds like a giant hustle!

I've got some people that check people out all the time so I went to them and asked about the guy. They knew him and told me "yes he ran a class on investing before. He went to the hole (solitary confinement) for stealing all his students' Social Security numbers so he could steal money with them. Also he was a Rat that told on everyone on his case."

The next day I saw my friend in the cafeteria again. He talked to his bunky. His bunky was one of the students the guy tried to scam out of his Social Security number. So we got a good laugh out of it and said we would figure out what to do about it later after we had a few ideas.

Well the next day I was with another friend and my bunky at the cafeteria. The tables have 4 stools each. All of a sudden the con artist comes and sits on the empty stool next to me.

I say Hi and then just sit and wait for my friend's unit to come in. They were the next unit.

In less than a minute my friend walks in. He goes through the line, gets his food, and my bunky gets up to let him sit down.

My friend asks me if I said anything. I said no but as you can see I've got my glasses on so I can see a con artist from a mile away and looked at the guy.

I told the guy we checked him out and we know... HE'S NO GOOD!!

I said I know he was trying to con my friend out of his money. I know he tried to steal other people's Social Security numbers in his classes before and went to the hole for it. And I know he told on everyone in his case. I told him that if he tries to con any of my friends again I was going to hurt him real bad.

Then with that out of the way I said I don't care if you hustle these rats like yourself or these cho-mo's (child molesters) but you need to learn what all good con men know... who you can hustle and who you can't.

With all that out of the way I said now that we are at an understanding I still want to take his class. It never hurts to learn a good hustle.

We got up and left him looking like he was going to cry.

My other friend said you could have at least let me know what was going on. I said sometimes you just have to go with the moment.

We all had a real good laugh.

15 comments:

  1. Fortunately, it all turned out into a good laugh!
    Good story!

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    1. Even in a serious situation there can be humor. My son was firm but saw the absurdity at the same time.

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  2. Well I am pretty new to "Leaves on My Tree" so I was a bit taken aback to learn that your son had been in prison. It must have been rather distressing for you. So much stuff seems to happen in prisons. It takes guts and good fortune to come out unscathed... and this applies to the prison staff as well as the prisoners.

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    1. Distressing is a mild word to describe our feelings. He has three children that he has not seen in a long time. He is looking forward to the day when he will be able to be with them again. I do not believe he came out unscathed. He is quick to notice a slight whether it is real or imagined. He still feels trapped because in essence he is still a prisoner. He is just being a prisoner with people who care about him.

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  3. It was good your son checked this guy out! So sad that there are people like that guy trying to take advantage of people.

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    1. Luckily all my children are pretty good about sizing the character of people. They certainly did not get that from me. But I am learning from them.

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  4. I am impressed by the way your son handled this con artist.

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    1. Me too. The wisdom comes from his paternal grandmother, the wisest woman I ever knew.

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  5. Glad your son had this guy checked out and was able to make sure some others were not cheated. He handled the situation well.

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    1. I thought he did too. From what he has told me prisoners routinely check out the facts on other prisoners. It is safer that way.

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  6. I'm glad your son was not cheated.

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  7. I'm glad your son was not cheated.

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    1. Me too. But I'm sure he wasn't too worried. He had nothing to be cheated of.

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  8. People telling you to earn billions in a second are always con.
    I love Raymond Chandler's quote: "There is no honest way to make a million." (Well, written in the Fifties, I think)

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    1. Another saying is "When something seems too good to be true, it usually is."

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