Avoiding Street Scams
Ten years after the fact, I’m still embarrassed by how I got scammed by a street urchin in Jamaica. He approached our car as a photographer and I were stalled in traffic in Montego Bay and said, “Hey, you’re going the wrong way. It’s me, from the hotel.” He talked his way into the car, chattering about how he worked at the hotel where we were staying and had seen us there, showed us how to get out of the traffic jam, but then led us into a seedy neighborhood, grabbed a bag of drugs from a guy who ran up to the car, tried to sell it to us, got kicked out of the car, and demanded payment for his expert tour guidance.
