Money Drop Scam Alive and Well in Moscow.

[Turboguy]

I have not seen this mentioned for a long time here So since they tried the money drop scam on my Saturday and a few years ago they also tried it on my in Kiev, I thought it might be worth mentioning again.

It has been so long since I had it explained to me I might be a little off in how it works but you will get the idea of what to avoid.

You are walking along a street, or as in my case climbing the steps of the metro entrance in Moscow.  The person in front of you drops a big wad of money.   There may be a guy walking beside you who will pick it up and hand it to you.  If you pick it up or take it from the guy then the scam is on.  As I remember how it works you find yourself surronded by three Russians.  Let me reword that to three big Russian men who start claiming you removed a large amount of the money and if you don't replace it they will call the police and all three will testify you took the money.  Basically your choices are to either give them the money they claim is missing or whatever you can negotiate or to spend a few days in a very unpleasant jail.  At the trial the charges will probably be dismissed buty you will have spend a fair amount of time waiting in jail unless you have someone with you who can bail you out.  Anyway if someone in front of you drops a big wad of money  DON'T TOUCH IT

Also you might want to give gypsies a wide berth.  Yesterday in the metro a early teen gypsy girl walked up to me and pointed to her wrist.  I thought she was asking the time and I showed her the time on my watch.  She shrugged her shoulders and walked away.  One minute later her mother, her and two little sisters came up to me quickly and I had 8 sets of hands going for every pocket I own.  I reached back and took a death grip on my wallet through my pants and broke away and got in the metro car as quck as I could and came away loosing nothing but do watch out for gypsies.    I know Cher had a great song about them but that is about all the good that will ever come from them.