A young man around 18 called hinself Josh and claimed he was home schooled and trrying to get points for entereing San Diego State University. Was selling magazine subscriptions for military overseas, would not come back but gave a receipt with United Circulation LLC. I gave $20.00 cash for a Readers Digest subscription. I went out to the street a moment later and he was gone. If I find him in the neighborhood I will place under citizens arrest. and bring to police. Please contact me at [email protected] so I can follow up with more info.

Same thing happened to me today. A chipper young girl identifying herself as a homeschooled neighbor who lived around the block, told me that she was working on a project. I was thinking, 'Okay, like a scavenger hunt or something?' First fishy thing was that she gave just TOO much detail about everything so as to sound believable. The second fishy thing was that she had a few too many tattoos than I would expect a home-schooled highschooler to have. The third odd thing was that she gushed on a bit much about how much she liked "Weird Al" Yankovich after seeing my t-shirt of the same. I thought to myself, "Really? SERIOUSLY?"

She talked very quickly, which made it difficult for me to get in a word edgewise, but the magazine solicitation finally came out -- and it had a twist. Sure, lots of places try to do fundraisers by selling magazines we don't need, but HER project was different: you can donate your magazine purchases to military men and women overseas! She handed me a very WORN piece of paper that looked like it had seen just too many customers. Not even my old Girl Scout forms looked this worn after a season of selling cookies! The paper had on it the names of military personnel who were the anticipated recipients of my "tax decuctible" gift. Yes, tax deductible -- "UNLIKE those 'fraudulent solicitors.'" She even promised the receipt, and went over in detail all the info on the receipt. Had I had my phone handy, I would've called the 800 number right there in front of her, but I didn't have my phone handy, unfortunately.

I told "CiCi" that I thought it was a wonderful idea, but that I had been burned before w/mag subscriptions. I told her that I wanted to check it out first and I would get back to her -- after all, she gave such a good description of her 'residence around the block' that I could probably just check to see her car and go drop off a check. OR she could come back next week -- how is that so bad if you're a local kid? CiCI had all kinds of excuses, from "the company website is down" to she can't give out any personal information (she'd already identified her 'house.')

I remembered all the pertinent information from our conversation and googled it when I got in the house. That's when I found this website. I immediately called my neighbor, who had just finished talking to her at the door. She had just brushed her off by giving her a dollar (she'll take cash donations, too, for your convenience!) I then called the police, who had already rec'd a call from a neighbor about the same thing. NOTE: make sure you get a good description of the person for the police.