Eye wear scam
Eye wear scam: this post is about the real situation which happened to us in the Historic Center.
We have been joyfully walking from Cafe Tacuba, and we were about to cross the street, talking to each other in English. Suddenly at the traffic lights we start to hear screaming and we see an agitated indigenous woman screaming on our son and holding in the hand a pair of broken glasses. She was claiming (in broken English) that our son bumped on her, and knocked out the glasses from her face, then stepped (?) on them.
Glasses, indeed in broken condition.
Then immediately after she starts to request money telling that she just bought those glasses yesterday, and they costed 9000 pesos. And she has an invoice, just in the pocket, how convenient!
In that precise moment I had a sudden warning light lighting in my head:
My RayBans Limited edition costed 300 USD, which is roughly 6000 pesos, and a house maid, badly dressed claims that is able to buy herself glasses for 9000 pesos?
Suddenly out of nowhere a guy appeared, saying that he has an optician shop just nearby and he can fix those broken glasses for around 4000 pesos.
In that moment I got another warning light in my head:
How convenient! Just broken and immediately they will get repaired!
My husband tried to negotiate and politely solve the situation, in Spanish, and we even started to walk in the direction on the optician, then I couldn’t ignore warning lights in my head anymore.
I stepped in (I am blond, short hair, very much visible that I am not local). Nobody from the scammers expected that I speak Spanish and I started intensively question the house maid about the glasses, I immediately requested to give them to my hand, so I can assess the brand and the quality of glass. Guess what? She didn’t want! Then I started to question her, how come that she can afford such expensive glasses, I basically flooded her with words. She started to back off, and then I requested to go and talk to police.
In that precise moment she turned back, with her fake broken glasses, and started to run away.
So the tourist eye wear scam is as follows:
1. Spot foreigners with kids
2. Pretend that the kid caused a damage
3. Shoot a very high price (maybe the foreigner will give you money right away)
4. If the money hasn’t been given, the help (in the person of a handy optician) will arrive and still is the chance to suck half of the given number from the foreigner for the fake reparation
So, beware… and learn Spanish 😉
