Armoire Robbery

Yours truly came within a zebra's hair of being swindled out of $500 last week.

I don't know which would hurt more, the loss of the money (which is getting scarcer these days) or the permanent damage to my inflated ego. 

Many of you will recall I wrote an anti-scamming book years ago -- Tuesday With Mantu, My Adventures with a Nigerian Con Artist, available on Amazon and various websites wherever crappy self published books are sold.

Here's how it all went down.

As of late I have been actively decluttering the house. It's a big house for one person. And we always made the mistake of buying too much furniture. Lucy, my whiny dog, has made a bed out of everything that has a cushion on it.  And everything else collects dust and hair, the way a Shitgibbon Bund Rally collects high school dropouts who are now self-proclaimed PhDs in Political Science.

My sister in law was going to take the armoire pictured above, but the logistics of getting it from my place in Culver City to hers in Lakewood seemed daunting. So I turned to the interwebs and put up a listing on FaceBook's Marketplace. I added some brief, clever copy in the vein of Hemingway, "For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Used." 

And within minutes my computer started dinging.Not surprising because I am, allegedly, a professional at this.

The first inquiry, actually, the second too, came from a woman who was leery about going to a stranger's house to see his armoire. Both wanted to make sure I was real and put me through a gauntlet of verification thigamajigs. As the father of two grown daughters I understood completely and would hope my girls would be equally cautious.

They went silent, and then I heard from Robert Tajawoski. 

Robert asked how old the armoire was. The condition. The size. All the kind of questions one would expect from a careful buyer of used armoires. After a little back and forth he decided he wanted it. And said he was out of town but that the guys who work for him would come buy tomorrow to pick up the behemoth. Sight unseen.

Damn I was good at this, I mistakenly thought.

To secure the Armoire he offered to pay me $500 (full asking price) via Zelle. I'm more of a Venmo guy but who was I to argue about a quick sale and wired money placed in my bank account? Money which could immediately be turned into a two inch thick Tomahawk steak or expensive, sushi grade Ahi Tuna.

Then I got an email...

Like I said I'm not that familiar with Zelle and Robert was kind enough to "help" me navigate the process. 

I didn't have a Zelle Business account (as requested by the email) and I told Robert he'd need to send another $500. He acted a little perturbed  (all part of the game) and asked if he could trust me to refund the money after I got my initial 500.

I agreed. And moments later, I received another email from "Zelle."

He'd given me $1000. The selling price was $500. So I owed Robert $500. 

Perfect I thought.

Then my spidey sense kicked in. I checked my Wells Fargo account and there were not two $500 deposits made. Nor were they pending. I told Robert, who was growing impatient, I was having difficulty figuring out how to "refund" his money and called Zelle. There, I learned there was no such thing as a Zelle Business Account.

Having made myself familiar with many types of scams, I recalled a scene from Mamet's House of Games (an excellent primer in con artistry), in which Joe Mantegna silkily tricks Lindsey Crouse to hand him more money than they had initially agreed to exchange. 

Realizing what was transpiring, I told Robert, whose name on his Zelle account was Josh Stanley, to politely go fuck himself. I also told Robert I was forwarding all our chats and correspondence to my cousin Ira Silverbergstein who works in the FBI's Internet Fraud Division, Interpersonal Banking Unit. Seemed plausible and appropriately threatening. 

Besides, I thought, if he can make shit up, so can I.

I didn't hear from Robert again.