So, a desperate dude rapidly approaches you while you're captive pumping gas, imploring you to purchase some gold he's got a discount price, because of some story about he's in a tight spot and he needs the cash and when you sell the gold back to the pawn shop you'll make your money back and then some. Yadda yadda yadda.

Sound too good to be true? You're right, it is too good to be true, another word is fraud, but some of your fellow Tri-Citians, unfortunately, are not that wise. It's happened so many times, with confirmation from pawn shops about an uptick in phony fools gold, it got the cops to reach out to the community.

This afternoon we received information from two of our local pawn shops that they have seen an increase over the last three weeks of people coming in to sell "gold" jewelry. When the people are told the jewelry isn't gold they have all told the same story. These fraud victims were all allegedly contacted at local gas stations by an adult male claiming to be in a dire situation and needing money. The suspect male claims to have gold and will sell it to the victims at a reduced cost. The victims then provide the suspect male with money for the "gold" jewelry then go try to sell it to make their money back. The suspect male in all cases was described as a Hispanic male driving a white van or a blue SUV with children in the vehicle.

If you have been a victim of this fraud or been approached by this suspect please give us a call at 509-628-0333 so we can attempt to identify this male.

We would like to remind you that if you are approached on the street or in a parking lot by someone you do not know to purchase something there's a good chance the item is not real or is stolen. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Give us a call right away and let us come out and investigate.

Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware. I learned that from Mike Brady cautioning his son Greg about buying a used car on a Brady Bunch episode, ya know.

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