Woman Falls Victim to 24K Con

SANTA CLARITA â€”  Higinia Perez, 72, thought she could do a good deed and at the same time make some easy money, almost $20,000, in an afternoon. But this widow, who lives on Social Security, got caught in a cruel con job, officials say, a new spin on a time-worn ruse.

In the process, she lost her meager savings and her jewelry.

“God punished me for taking out the money,� Perez said tearfully, in Spanish, in an interview Monday. Her daughter--one of nine children--translated.

“It was because I was thinking of the $20,000,� Perez said.

Her saga began last Wednesday, when she was leaving the K mart at the intersection of Soledad Canyon and Bouquet Canyon roads in Valencia at about noon. Perez was approached by a man who appeared to be about 40, she said. He told her his son had been struck by an automobile and was badly injured.

“He was very sad, crying,� Perez said.

The man was carrying three metal bars, each with “24K� etched into them. These “gold� bars, he told her, had fallen from the car during the accident. He was hoping to find the driver and trade them for money needed to help pay his son’s medical expenses.

A second man approached and, upon hearing the story, suggested he could sell one of the bars to K mart, Perez said. This second man said he knew an employee there who could help make the deal happen.

This second man walked into the store with one of the bars and returned a few minutes later with a large envelope full of cash, she said. The store had paid him $20,000 for the bar, he said, but couldn’t buy the others until an armored truck arrived with more cash at 4 p.m.

The first man said he couldn’t wait that long. The second man offered to buy a bar for $10,000 and brought the cash from a nearby building he said was his office.

The second man encouraged Perez to get in on the deal, Perez said. The first man said he would accept whatever she could pay.

Perez, who became a widow 30 years ago and raised her children mostly on her own, saw a chance to make the money she needed to pay off her car loan and help her children financially.

But her daughter, Maria Golomb, said her mother had also been moved by the man’s story. Perez had taught her children to help the less fortunate whenever possible, Golomb said.

Perez drove the men to her bank, where she withdrew $300 from her checking account, and then to her home where she gave them her $500 in emergency cash. She also gathered various pieces of jewelry she had to bolster the payment.

“I don’t know what I was thinking at that point,� Perez said.

Back at the K mart parking lot, the two men got out. The second one arranged to meet her there at 4 p.m. so that they could go into the store together and sell their bars.

Returning to the lot at the appointed time, she waited. At 4:30 p.m., she went into the store alone and told her story to the manager.

“The manager patted her on the back and said, ‘You’ve been robbed,’ � Golomb said.

Her metal bar, now being held by sheriff’s deputies as evidence, is likely brass, she was told by the deputies. Both men are at large.

Similar schemes, known as “pigeon drops,� occur regularly in Southern California, according to law enforcement officials. The perpetrators of these crimes most often target the elderly.

“They are aware that these people . . . may have some money stashed away in savings,� said Lt. Tom Pigott, head of the detective bureau at the Antelope Valley Sheriff’s Station.

Several Santa Clarita Valley residents have been swindled in recent years, he said, sometimes out of thousands of dollars in similar schemes. On several occasions, Pigott said, people have paid a person who claims to have a winning lottery ticket he or she can’t legally redeem.

An accomplice often participates as a “bystander,� offering to become partners with the victim in buying the ticket.

Perez’s children are helping her replace the money she lost in the scheme. And although the swindle has shaken her, she gives thanks that the men who took her money did not physically harm her.

“I’m having trouble sleeping, not from what I’ve lost,� Perez said, “but the feeling that the things that happened to me could have been much worse.�