I watched ?The Real Hustle?on (I think) BBC4 yesterday evening- very enlightening, especially the item about valet parking. One of the tame con.-men from the programme dressed up in a high-vis. jacket, and waited just inside a parking compound. In drives a gentleman with his Audi. .hands over his car(and house) keys to the fake attendant, takes a receipt (also fake) and the con.-man drives off?it then transpired that there was a sat.nav unit in the glove compartment, with the driver?s home address loaded.
When the man returned for his car, and his ?receipt? was revealed as fake, he was flabbergasted, and the presenter handed back his keys, pointing out that if the hustle had been in earnest, he would probably have lost the contents of his house as well as the Audi.
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Ive seen this a few times, Its a really eye opening show, Its on BBC Three.
One I saw was the 3 of them where driving a van around looking for wireless internet signals from houses.
They picked the house with the highest security on the wireless internet, parked up & hacked into it with software that is freely available & watched what the person was doing for about an hour.
They printed out his holiday plans etc & then went & knocked on the guys door to show him.
To say the guy was shocked was an understatement, He thought his security software would protect his wireless network but it didn't.
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One I saw was the 3 of them where driving a van around looking for wireless internet signals from houses. They picked the house with the highest security on the wireless internet, parked up & hacked into it with software that is freely available & watched what the person was doing for about an hour.
Saw that one and it had this typical TV scandalist tone - not only they made it sound like they cracked highest wi-fi security in seconds (which they didn't) but also pretended they could see exactly what the guy was doing on the screen and what he was printing thanks to that WEP hack, which of course is a lot of old cobblers. It was almost as grotesque as B movie hacking, when a character hacks to pentagon with nothing but old netscape browser and a lot of fast but random keystrokes.
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[Nissan 2.2 dCi are NOT Renault engines. Grrr...]
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I don't like the way these programmes give ideas to petty crims who may not have tried these scams before. The more they broadcast this stuff the more common the practices will become...
joc
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There was a scam in a previous series where they set themselves up in a house, hired a new Mondeo, then advertised the car for sale in the classifieds at a knock down price. Prospective buyers arrived, the attractive blonde swindler Jess answered the door, told them she didn't know much about the car etc. The buyers then left a deposit, with the blonde telling them to come back later that day with the balance at a set time, so her 'hubby' can finalise the deal.
Repeat this procedure a few times, so a few deposits taken within the space of a few hours.
The swindlers then disappeared and you've guessed it, half a dozen unhappy punters arrived at pretty much the same time to find no car and a deserted house. It didn't take long for them to twig....
As an aside, Jess alone makes the program worth watching :-)
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the item about valet parking.
It's always a bit disconcerting in the US, where they take valet parking for granted. Not sure how the hire car company would react if they never saw their car again!
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There was another car con in this series.
A VW Polo was advertised and only a mobile number was listed. They broke into a house and Jess told a prospective buyer the address and she would only accept cash. He looked at the car on the drive and decided to buy it. They went into the kitchen where the buyer paid over the money and received the V5.
Then there was a knock on the front door and in came 2 plain clothes police and flashed a warrant card and search warrant. Seized the cash and V5, arrested Jess and told the man to stay seated in the kitchen or he would be arrested. The policemen then took Jess outside and all of them drove away in the car.
It took about 20 minutes before the buyer moved from his chair and when he went outside his face was a picture when he realised the car and everyone had gone.
Just imagine being in someone's house and being arrested for breaking and entering, plus loosing a bundle of cash. It could easily happen.
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Roger
I read frequently, but only post when I have something useful to say.
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