First, some history…
I knew when I came to Naples that it was the scam capital of Italy. I had read online before I came, about people who were scammed, and how they were scammed. Their stories are often quite funny, and when I read them, I thought “that could never happen to me, I’m too smart for that.” Or at least that’s what I thought. I was wrong. I’m not too smart for that. Nor am I nearly as alert as I thought I was. I mean, on the bus to Naples last night I even thought to myself “don’t get scammed/robbed/pick pocketed here – be careful.”, but I guess that wasn’t enough. I just got scammed. It took me less than thirty seconds to realize it, but it was too late, my scammers were long gone by then.
Here’s how it went…
I was walking to the Metro station, and passing through a busy market area. A guy asked me if I wanted to buy a cheap laptop, and I brushed him off just like I do to everyone who asks me to buy some of their goods. Then, another guy asked me if I wanted to buy an iPhone, which I didn’t, I thought for sure it would be fake. Then he pushed it into my face and said €100. It looked real, and since he was pushing it into my face, I took it, and messed around with it a bit. He showed me that the camera worked. He took my picture and showed me. I rotated it, zoomed in by pinching it, and I looked at other photos of other tourists. I looked at the calendar, and dialed the phone, everything worked, and for sure it was a real iPhone. Sweet! I don’t need an iPhone, but €100 is a huge bargain, and since my iPod got stolen in Guatemala, I thought this could be a good replacment for that. I said I’d give him €40 for it. His english was really poor, and we did the usual bargain thing, but in the end I said I only had €40, so it was that or nothing. He said okay.
I was sure he had stolen it from somewhere – probably from another traveller – and just needed to unload it, so he was taking the €40 and running. I watched as he put it in an old box with the manual, the charger, the dock, and a european power converter, all of which I had seen when he was making the sales pitch to me. He put the old box in a blue bag while I gave him the money, and kept signalling for me to put it into my pack, because he didn’t want anyone to see.
I was happy to have a new iPhone, even though I don’t like the idea of buying anything that’s hot. I was only about ten steps away from where the deal had gone down before I thought to myself, “fuck, that was too good to be true, I bet I just got scammed.” I dug into my pack to dig out my new iPhone, and was barely even surprised when I opened the little box to find a partially full bottle of water instead of the lovely little iPhone that I watched him package up for me. I looked back to where we made the trade, but of course he and my money were gone.
I have NO IDEA how he managed to swap the iPhone box with the box that had the bottle of water in it. My only thought is that right about the time that we were swapping cash for iPhone, the laptop guy came close and asked again if I wanted to buy a laptop for cheap. I’m guessing that he made the swap with my “salesman” behind his back without me seeing. However it happened, it was REALLY smooth. I had no idea.
I’m sure now, that all of the tourist pictures that I looked at on the iPhone were others just like me who had been scammed. It’s pretty funny actually! Ha ha! Someone out there right now is looking at my picture on that same iPhone, and having their picture taken just before they realize that they too have bought a really expensive bottle of water. 🙂