Got ripped off tonight, but it could have been worse
I'm posting this story for two reasons. First, as a potential warning to others. Secondly, because I want to understand what happened to me a little more. I got scammed tonight in some way, but I think I got off cheap, because I may have avoided something worse. It was organized in some way, but I don't know if it was law enforcement or criminals. In this hobby, the good guys are hard to find.
Sometimes I get hollered at on this forum for saying too much, or for saying stuff the wrong way. But this forum is about the exchange of information, so I'm not going to bullshit the situation, especially since my evening was not successful anyway.
One exception: I won't mention any hotels by name. So there's this sort of "famous" hotel on Murfreesboro Road. And next to it is a seedier place where I have had some luck in the past. Across the street from these hotels was a working girl who looked okay. A little chunky, but nothing too gross. It was sprinkling, so she was wearing a raincoat. I took a couple of passes to visually confirm the situation, and then I went down the road to a convenience store to grab some cash and some condoms.
I game back and "offered a pretty girl a ride," which is how I carefully pick somebody up. I then reiterate that I'm just taking a pretty girl for a ride, and ask if that pretty girl wants to show me her tits. She did. So far, so good. She says we have seen each other before, though I honestly didn't remember if we had. I told her that I have had some luck at the seedy place across the street, and this is where things started to go differently than I had expected.
She said "they don't like me over there," which I thought was weird. She wanted me to go to the hotel next door (the "famous" one), and she wanted me to pay for her room for the night. By comparison, the total out of pocket for me would be lower, and that would compensate her for whatever I wanted to do.
That should have been my first clue. It sounded too good to be true. I should have said, "No, HERE'S what we're doing to do. I'm going to this place, where I have had luck before, and where I know how things work. Here's how much I will pay you to do this and this and maybe this. " But instead, I decided to be reasonably accommodating to her request. We parked next to the office of this more well-known hotel, and she explained the following:
I was to give her money, which she would use to procure the hotel for the night. Now, I'm not a complete idiot. I said "How do I know you won't just take my money and I'll never see you again. " She offered two solutions: First, she said, "Here take my ring. It's my daughter's ring and very important to me, blah, blah. Also I'm leaving my gloves on the dashboard and I don't have any other gloves. " Anyway, I was right next to the office, so she would never really be out of my sight.
Oh, money: She told me about how much the room would be. It would be less than $50, but since all I had was twenties, I gave her sixty, and she made a big deal about how she was going to bring me my change and my receipt. This was, I guess, mistake number two.
So she went in and did this transaction, which took a little longer than it seemed it should. Maybe 6 or 7 minutes. In the meantime, there was this guy in the parking lot who sort of eyed me. He didn't look like a cop, or even a crook. He just looked at me enough for me to notice him, and he eventually walked into a room, there by the office. We'll get back to him.
I was looking around a bit, thinking about what I had said to her, and whether or not I would get pinched (I have never been pinched in this hobby, so I wasn't entirely sure what I was looking for). Anyway, I was hopeful it would all just work out and we would get to work. She eventually did come back, and then explained the second part of the plan.
First, I should point out that she did not yet give me my change back. Because she booked the room as a single, she could not ride to the room with me. We had to go to the room separately. Fishy, yes, but sort of understandable. And I had the awesomely-valuable ring, right? I insisted on keeping the ring, and she was okay with that. She gave me a key to the room. It was on the other side of the building. There were two ways to get to the other side. She recommended one. It sounded fine to me. She, of course, was going to walk around the other way, or through the building, or whatever. I was not suspicious. Mistake number three, I guess.
So I drove around the building and sought out the room by number. Here's where I started thinking critically about the situation and being very careful. I pulled up in front of the room, but was aware that I could conceivably be walking into a bad situation. My policy over the years has been "we walk into the room together, or you come to my room that I have already procured. I don't walk into any damn room you tell me to. ".
So I decided to sit in my (locked) truck, in front of the room, and wait for her to come along. She wouldn't be long, right? Well, I gave it about 10 minutes, and she did not show. So she has skated with my sixty bucks? That kind of stings, but I could not get out of my head what else there may be in store for me. I considered the possibility that my date had beaten me to the room, but that seemed unlikely. And if the deal was legit, it seems like she would have taken a peek outside and beckoned me in.
One of the people that I saw over on that side of the building was the guy who had eyeballed me over by the office. It seemed really strange that he was suddenly over here. But that's not the weirdest thing that happened. Eventually, a taller, white woman with dark hair that was sort of french braided came down from further down this building, and went to the door of the very room that my date had told me to enter. To my surprise, somebody opened the door (but I did not see who it was). They talked briefly, and then the white woman (who was a little cute) walked away and the door was closed.
It was pretty obvious to me at this point that I was done for the night, but I continued to stick around a few minutes, in hopes of seeing my date and seeing the whole thing cleared up. But then I saw a car in the parking lot that may have been nothing, but it spooked me a bit. I felt like the longer I sat there in the parking lot, the longer I was a target for either LE or somebody who wanted to rob me.
Fortunately, I was thinking WITH MY HEAD by this point and, as much as I didn't want to lose sixty bucks, I was contemplating how much better that would be than either of the other situations. I decided to take off. As I was pulling out of the hotel parking lot, I noticed a cop car right there under the awning, and considered whether or not the whole thing was an LE pinch and he was about to follow me. I got out on the road, turned around, and headed home.
While getting on the ramp to the interstate, I tossed the evidence: Her ring, and the condoms (no, this cowboy doesn't come home with condoms, no matter how well they're hidden). I drove home frustrated, but mostly curious.
So, what was the scam? Was I about to get arrested? Was I about to get robbed? Or was this all about scamming me out of sixty bucks?
A night like tonight is almost enough to scare one out of the hobby completely. If massage parlors weren't turning into a complete waste of time, I would never find myself on the street like that.
In summary: I may have just gotten spooked and everything would have been fine if I had just walked into that room. But there were just a couple of things that didn't add up, and I have too much to lose. The longer I sat there, the more convinced I was that I was getting out cheap, if I could just get out. So I did. I took my loss.
