After a female University employee was scammed out of $500 by a pair of con artists on Friday, University Police are cautioning that such crimes are much more common than the statistics indicate. Although last week's flim-flam scam was the first reported this semester, Deputy Chief of Investigations Tom King said many flim-flam scams go unreported because the victim feels too embarrassed to go to the police. "For every one that's reported, there are probably quite a few more and quite a few more attempts," King said. In Friday's theft, a female University student reported that she was approached by two women on the 3500 block of Market Street at about 5 p.m. The women claimed they had found money and offered the student half in exchange for $500 in advance cash. After the woman withdrew the cash from an ATM, she gave it to the two women, who fled the scene. The employee reported that both women were African American. One of the women was about 5'8" tall and weighed 160 pounds, with long, black braided hair. She was wearing a white shirt and black pants at the time of the incident. The other woman was described as about 25-years-old with black hair colored red in the front. She was wearing a blue knitted sweater and blue jean shorts at the time. The two women reportedly fled the scene in a red Ford Focus. "It's the classic flim-flam attempt," King said. "It never ceases to amaze me how successful it is." King and Penn Chief of Police Maureen Rush also warned that flim-flam artists approach Asian women most often. According to Rush, the scam artists may think their intended victims do not speak English, so it will be easier to trick them. King also warned that it is easier than most people think to be taken in by a flim-flam scam. "In retrospect, it almost seems incredible, unbelievable that students could fall for this," King said. "But these people who do this are very, very professional. It's not as difficult as it seems to be duped." Rush advised students to be skeptical when approached by a stranger. "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is," she said. In the fall of 1998, there was a rash of flim-flams over a three-week period, in which two Penn students and a Children's Hospital of Philadelphia employee were scammed out of a combined $14,190.
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