I wanted to tell you about two new scams that just
happened to us where we're living here in Queretaro, Mexico.
I've been living here for a couple of
years and hadn't experienced any scams at all.
And then all of a sudden I'm hit with two new scams.
The first one is a pizza scam.
So this actually happened to us two
days in a row, yesterday and today.
So what happened yesterday is this guy pulls up to us
on a motorcycle while we're in our car, and he has
one of those things that a pizza delivery driver has, and
he pulls out a couple of pizzas, and then he starts
telling us a story about how he's coming from Juriquilla, which
is on the other side of the city.
And we knew he was lying because the pizza box
that he had was not from a pizzeria in Juriquilla,
that was from somewhere else in the city.
And then he had some delivery near where
we were at that he couldn't make.
So we knew he was lying.
We politely declined because we
didn't want pizza anyway.
And then he escalated the interaction and called
me rude for not purchasing his pizzas.
I shouldn't have said anything.
I should have just driven off right away.
But my emotions got the better of me and I
was like, no, you're the rude one in this situation,
but next time I'll try to control my emotions better
and not continue with escalating interactions like that because that's
the kind of thing that can get you into trouble.
So we drove off. And then
the same thing happens again today.
So what's a scam here?
Well, I don't know exactly what it is,
but I think it's one of three possibilities.
Number one, and I think the least likely is
that he's stealing pizzas and then reselling them.
But this seems pretty stupid because if you're going to
live a life of theft, why would you go around
stealing low cost things like pizzas to resell?
You would go with phones and something more expensive,
Right?
My next thought is, well, maybe
he's getting pizzas from some source.
So it's stealing in another kind of way.
Like this kind of situation where he has a
buddy who's working at a pizzeria and his buddy
is making pizzas that aren't being ordered.
So then he's making these fake orders and then he's
handing them off to his buddy to sell them nearby.
So they're stealing all the ingredients from
the restaurant to make pizzas to sell
them and then they're splitting the cash.
I think that's a possibility, but a
third possibility is that it actually has
nothing to do with pizzas at all.
And this is actually a ploy to get you
to take your wallet or your purse out and
then they snatch it from you and drive off.
And you can't catch them because they're on
a motorcycle and they can weave all around
and go somewhere where cars cannot.
So if a guy pulls up to you on a
motorcycle with a pizza box, what do you do?
Well, if you're in your car,
don't roll your windows down.
Leave your windows up, and just shake your head
and drive off right away if you can.
And if you're not in a car,
well, then try to protect your belongings.
Try to go into a store or something like that.
And I found out about this second scam recently
when I took my car into the mechanic.
One of the things that I wanted the mechanic to fix
while he had my car was that I have these plastic
things over the air vent on the front of the car,
and a couple screws were missing from that, and it was
loose, so I wanted him to tighten that up.
So when I got the car back from the mechanic,
he's like, "I was looking at that vent area, and
I think someone was trying to steal something from your
car because there were like 15 screws missing and a
bunch of these plastic secure pins as well."
"And there's no way that all those things are
going to come loose just by driving around."
"So what I think was going on is that
somebody was in the middle of trying to steal
something from your car and then got interrupted somehow."
And then the mechanic says to me,
"I've seen this happening recently with valets.
So you'll valet your car, and then the valet
worker will have a shopping list of things that
he's supposed to remove from cars, but they won't
take things that you'll notice right away."
"Like, they won't take sunglasses or something like that.
Like recently, I had a client who
had a speaker stolen from valet."
"So I think when your car was at a
valet, at some point, they might have been trying
to steal something from inside there, inside the front
of your car by that air vent."
So how do you prevent this scam?
Well, one thing I did is that I added an air
tag in my car, so when I valet my car, I
can see where the car is at if they kept it
in the parking lot or if they drove it somewhere else.
Something else you could do is you could add a
dash cam where the camera is recording at all times.
And something else you could do is just not use valet.
But here in Queretaro, that's not really realistic because
there's so many places that are valet only.
There's a lot of places you just wouldn't be able
to go if you swore that you wouldn't use valet.
Either that or you would have to
take an uber or something like that.
Now, I don't know if these scams are new, but they
are new to me, so I wanted to let you know
about them so you don't fall victim to them.
But anyway, I hope this helps you
out and helps you avoid these scams. This isn't goodbye.
You can watch one of these videos
next and I'll see you over there.