Watch for currency ‘inspectors’

At the train station in Bucharest, Romania, in October ’00, my friend George and I were exposed to a scam similar to that in which another ITN reader and his friend lost $100 each at the same station (May ’04, pg. 11).

We arrived from Moldavia early in the morning, tired, hungry and with no local currency. The McDonald’s restaurant in the station refused American dollars.

While my friend remained in the restaurant, I decided to risk a $10 black-market exchange and picked out a likely vendor. He and his companion flashed identification and claimed they were policemen. They said that fake American $100 bills were being passed and insisted on checking my currency for legitimacy.

Suspicious, and hoping to get them into a better lighted and more populated section of the station, I told them I had no such bills but that my friend did. They told me to bring him to them.

When they did not follow me into McDonald’s, I explained to George what was happening. We fled out another door.

We never saw the “policemen” again, but we did meet several American contract workers, all of whom claimed to know other Americans who had lost money to the scam while denying any personal loss.

BILL HOING
Silver Spring, MD