2 Dudes 1 Van

BeerNuts

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Sep 4, 2008
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www.beermonies.com
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So today I am out side target and I saw two dudes pull up to this poor old semi-handicaped chap leaving the store. They slowly creep up to him and ask him if you happens to know of anyone interested in home theater equipment. They for sure picked the wrong dude as he did not care less since he probably still had a tv from 1976.

I had totally forgot this but like 5yrs ago some duche bags tried this same thing to me out front a circuit city. How they where delivering this 3k of stuff to some guy from out of state. The guy turned down the order but still paid for it. (yeah right) and now they were free to sell this stuff for whatever they could get for it. They even had all these fake invoices and shipping sheets. You can't scam a scamer so I told um to fuck off and get a real job.

I had thought this was just these two dudes but this scam seems pretty wide spread if its still going strong 5yrs later and 700 miles away. Even my gf said some dudes tried it on her a few years ago. Anyone else have this happen? When i came out the store I tried to find their van trolling the lot to tell them how to make money online but they seemed to have moved on....
 


Once had some mexican dude try and sell me some cabinet speakers while I was gassing up my car a few years back, he gave me some bullshit story about overstocks or something. I don't know if I would call this a scam so much as creative fencing.
 
I was outside a gas station and this dude in a van who was with some chick came up to me and asked if I wanted to buy a $500 home theater piece for $200. Since they were from Rhode Island (I live near Boston -- wasn't THAT far away) and wanted to get rid of it because whoever they were delivering it to backed out. He was 'apparently' a home theater equipment delivery guy or something -- which set off alarm bells because the box wasn't too big and no company in their right mind would send out two drivers to deliver one piece of equipment (although, you never know...). Plus the dude was just grimy as fuck and he approached me AS I was pumping my own gas. "Hey, I know this is out of the blue but <insert scam here>..."

He also had some other gems like, "As you can see, this is a prime piece of home theater equipment" and "You seem like a nice guy, so I'm gonna offer it to you for $175." I actually started laughing after that one. I ended up telling him I'd buy it for something ridiculously low like $35 cause that's all I had and if not then he was shit out of luck. This elicited a, "You can't borrow it off anyone?" to which I merely looked at him like a complete fucking moron.

To credit the snake, he kept hard-selling me to the very end until I started the motions of getting in my car to leave -- to which he started to get a bit desperate/antsy/upset that I obviously wasn't buying shit and he started getting entirely too close to my door. After a quick, "Get the fuck out of here, I don't want your stupid fucking table" he eventually gave it up and walked back to his grimy-ass van to get ready for another scam.

But yeah -- pretty similar even down to the van. Dude literally had NO sales experience what-so-fucking-ever and is lucky I wasn't drunk cuz I probably would have done something dumb like spit in his face or something. Would make for a much more entertaining story, no doubt haha.
 
I spent several months doing this for a company out of Manhattan Beach when I was like 19. This hustle is very much legal and present in I believe every major US city. Every morning we'd load up the vans with home theater equipment at the warehouse and then go wherever we wanted and cold sell the shit out of them.

It fucking sucks. Easily the worst job I ever had. Hustling retarded strangers on the internet > hustling stupid people face to face and walking them to the ATM to take their rent money.
 
I applied for a job a few years ago for a "delivery driver" and it turned out to be for THIS job. Basically no training you just get in the car with one of these goofs and are just supposed to watch and learn. So it was my first day and I played along trying to figure it all out but after we sold a $100 pair of speakers to some old guy who had saved $900 for Christmas I never returned the next day.

Anyway basically the way it works is they have these cheap "home theater" speakers which I think cost something like $100 (I checked ebay/craigslist back then but don't remember brand now). You are supposed to try and sell them at no less than $200-250 (can't remember exactly) and that's what the company/boss gets. Any amount after that you get to keep.

The pitch goes something like "hey man you want a pair of speakers? I deliver them and the guys loaded an extra pair by accident but never marked it down on the order sheet" - dude produces an order sheet LOOK (and starts laughing). You want them dude? I'll sell for you cheap man, these things are worth over $1000 but I can give them to you CHEAP. Shows you the price/spec sheet which has the "retail" price at like $1200+ or something like that. And at this point if you're at the least bit interested they try to hustle for as much as they can get but will obviously go down as low as the $300 mark ($50 profit).

So one time when I was working at another job i'm gassing up the car at the gas station and I see these idiots (not the same guys but same deal) trying to hustle some old guy and I'm like it's bullshit those things are worth $100. One of the dudes FLIPS the fuck out and starts marching towards me getting all up in my face, i'm like dude get the fuck out of my face. Unless you're going to do something GET THE FUCK OUT. The dude goes on babbling and shit and finally walks away, he's like you wanna do this? I'm like let's do this, he starts walking towards the van and he's like FOLLOW US. I'm like fuck you FOLLOW ME.

I headed back to work (no they didn't follow me) and got a bunch of buddies in the car and we headed back for a beat down but the fuckers were gone.

This IS legal but it's grimey as fuck, doesn't even come close to rebills IMO.
 
It is considered theft by deception in some places.

You're probably right as I'm sure it's different in every state and province but at least in Ontario it's (or at least was) legal. But on the other hand even if it wasn't I'd say it's probably hard to nail one of these guys. You can't really nail the shop where product is stored because what are you going to nail them for? They simply load up the trucks and that's all. This is probably why they also don't do any training in-shop but rather throw you in with one of these guys and you're just supposed to "pick up" on it.

On the other hand if you do end up buying one of these things where do you go? With what? You pay cash, you get your speakers. No receipts, no license plates (no way you wrote it down or remembered if you were so pumped you drove to the ATM and pulled out $700 for your new set of speakers). So you're pretty much shit out of luck.

The only thing you could really do is have an undercover book one of these guys but good luck with that, they're so random it would take way too many resources for such a small nuisance. I've seen them maybe 3-5 times my entire life.
 
I remember one dude was way too enthusiastic about checking them out and turned out to be an undercover cop. I guess he was thinking they were stolen or something. After he showed us his badge I put my hand in my pocket and he freaked out like I was about to shank him. He ended up letting us go.

I also once sold a set to a guy that produced Redman. He didn't need to go to the ATM. We just followed him to his pad so he could get cash, and on the way we wondered if we may be about to be executed (didn't know who he was yet). But he turned out to be really cool. Hope he enjoyed the speakers.
 
About 15 years ago I bought 8 bottles of whisky and 4 bottles of rum from a guy who was smuggling it out of the back door of a large hotel. I figured that the hotel wouldn't miss it and it wasn't me who was stealing it so what was the problem?

So I spent a couple hundred bucks on 12 bottles of water! That was the last dodgy deal I was ever involved in. If a deal seems to good to be true... just walk away!
 
Two guys tried to sell me some crack out of a parked car midday in Seattle when I was 16. True story
 
They've been selling speakers out of vans in the mall parking lots in the suburbs back home as long as I can remember. Big ass old school paper cone headbanger speakers. I knew a few kids that bought them for their rooms or basements when we were in our teens.
 
I still see these guys in the shopping centers around here. I bought a pair of big ass floor standing speakers about 15 years ago from some of these dudes for like $75 bucks. They weren't Cerwin Vega's or anything, but for 75 bones, they cranked. The pitch I remember getting was that they were supposed to deliver them to a guy who wasn't home and if they take them back to the warehouse, the boss was going to flip out and fire them. So not only were they playing the "this is a kick ass deal" card, they were also throwing in the "help me not get my ass fired" angle.

I was at Home Depot a couple of weeks ago and I see a slimy looking character roaming the parking lot. I'm driving my truck and he practically runs over to where I park. "Hey man, I've got this $500 diamond plated contractor tool box for your truck that I need to sell for like $150." [cough] stolen [/cough]. I asked him if it was in his truck and he said no I've got it over here on the sidewalk. WTF. So I said no thanks and went in the store.

I come out 20 minutes later, and go to my truck. The same dude comes running over to me and says "Hey man, I've got this $500 diamond plated contractor tool box for your truck that I need to sell for like $150.".

I said, dude I know, you just asked me about buying this thing like 20 minutes ago remember, leave me alone. "Oh man, sorry, I'm just trying to check with everyone who has a truck to see if they want it". Obviously he's checking with everyone twice...just to be absolutely sure.
 
yap, tried selling to me as well in Toronto... this is what i said "I AM DEAF" in my best deaf person impersonation. Everyone had a good laugh, and we all parted ways.
 
Holy shit, I am surprised to see that this is a actually job. Though it sorta makes sense since it the grift was pretty well thought out with all their fake paperwork and what not. I really had always figured that they sold you broken speakers or stolen ones.