THE public is hereby alerted to be on the look-out for a “con man” moving around the city with counterfeit US$100 bills, which he has been passing off on unsuspecting persons, particularly female roadside food and snack vendors, around the city.Several persons are reported to have been fleeced by the man who has been moving around the city over the last several weeks. More recently, he has been targeting female vendors in Guyhoc Park, where he is reported to have fleeced at least three persons.
In Arapaima Street, Guyhoc Park, two women were deceived. Two Wednesdays ago, he showed up in front of a home in Arapaima Street, where he spoke with a young woman selling bread and snacks. The woman recalled that he drove up in a white Toyota Carina motor car, chauffeur driven, with the window wound half way up.

He got out of the car, looked into the show case and placed an order for 40 rotis with curry, which he said he wanted for Friday, July 3rd. The woman informed him that the cost would be $14,000, and that he would be required to pay a deposit. The man then tendered a crisp, new US$100 bill, and told her that he hadn’t any other currency at the moment. She was reluctant to accept the foreign currency, and so he told her that he was going to drive around to his mother in Guyhoc and get the deposit. However, after 20 minutes he returned without the money. He implored her to take payment out of the US$100, suggesting this time, that she should take out the entire $14,000 and he would uplift the package two Fridays later.
This she did, and handed him his change to the tune of $6,000. He immediately got back into the car and drove off. But after he had left, the shopkeeper said, she felt something strange about the money which was folded when he gave it to her. “I felt it was unusually soft and when I crushed it together, it began to disintegrate, that’s when I knew it was counterfeit.” She said she had the note checked out and it was confirmed that it was indeed counterfeit, but by then the man had disappeared with her $6,000.
The woman recalls vividly what he looks like: “He is dark, chubby with full eyes and low haircut. He’s in about his 50s,” she said.
ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD
Meanwhile, up the road from her, another vendor – a mother of four who sells snacks as well–said around 09:00 hrs. one morning, she was just preparing to set up her glasscase outside her home, when someone in the family told her that a man was outside enquiring for her.
The young mother said when she went outside, she saw a fancy silver grey Toyota Allion and a man, (fitting the same description the first victim gave), looked at her and told her that she was wanted at the police station. “ I bluntly asked him, “What for, I don’t have any brushes with the law.” She said he told her that she had bought some stolen food boxes. “So I said sorry, what I sell is not served in food boxes.”
It was then that he proceeded to tell her that he had a feeding programme scheduled for Friday and wanted to place an order for 100 puris and 20 egg balls. He took her and her husband’s phone numbers, saying that he would have to contact them to let them know what time he was coming to uplift the order. She said she handed the money to her husband and he put it aside.
By then the man who was again chauffeur- driven, with window half way up, drove off with the $6,000 change from the US$100. The young woman said she began working energetically towards having the order ready for Friday and she succeeded. “I got my sister to help me and she even went and bought a new mill to grind the split peas for the puri,” she recalled. But on the day they were expecting the man to pick up the items he just did not show up.
“We waited till it began getting late and then I figured he was not coming and that this thing had to be a hoax.” She said she informed her husband and they took a decision to use up what they could use and share out the remainder. “I sent some down to my church, and shared out to other people, but I didn’t get to sell even one, and so I lost on the whole order, and plus lost my $6,000 which I gave him as change,” the distraught young mother of four lamented. So in all, she lost $20,000.
When her husband went to a cambio to change the money, that was when he was told that it was counterfeit. Reflecting on the encounter, the woman’s husband said, “And the money looked brand new, that was what caught me.” But now he’s counting their losses and probably has come to the sad realisation that: “All that glitters is not gold.”

A TASTE FOR FISH
A third snack vendor, this time in Tuc Ville Terrace, related that one night, A man fitting the same description drove up in a fancy car with dark-tinted windows. He sat in the back of the car, did not get out and told the woman selling that the following day was his birthday and he wanted to feed some children. For this reason, he wanted to order 15 boxes of fish. While still comfortably seated in the backseat of the car, he signalled to her that she should bring $6,000 because he had only “come in” to Guyana a few days ago, and had only US currency, But this time he was met by a bold and brassy salesperson who, according to her, “quickly picked up the vibes,” and promptly replied: “Nah, nah! I don’ have no $6,000, suh you can keep getting up if you gon lef’ all the way down town and come here to change money.”
She said at that stage he asked her to sample her wares (the fish) she was selling. “I gave a piece to him and he drove away,” she said.

By Shirley Thomas