The winning lottery number story

Amigos:

The next one is a method local thieves use against unaware passerbyes (perhaps tourists!) on any street or near a large mall on the big cities in my country:

You may be walking, alone and calmly, any day over any sidewalk when a "poor" guy (men or women) will interrupt you handling some kind of a piece of paper in his hand for you to read; you, by the way he dresses and talks, will easily take the guy for someone new in "the big city" (a peasant from any lost village up in the Andes, perhaps) who asks you some help to read the "paper" he is handling; he will "explain", in a very poor spanish, that he doesn' know to read and needs to check if the paper he handles out, a lottery bill in fact (a false one, but lottery bill anyway) has won any prize at all;

of course, there happens to be a lottery stand very near both of you (you don't know yet, but it also happens that the lottery stand is run by a "friend" of the poor guy ---we'd better call him his accesory or accomplice) who "luckily" have at hand the results of the right lottery game he is looking for, and, ......why not?...... the lottery bill you have at hand has "won" an important amount in cash!!

In your mind (it almost every time happens so) you may try to keep all the prize for yourself (or perhaps you may try to get some of the money this poor guy has brought so fast to you at least, for helping him!!); it results then that the poor peasant was not so ignorant as you thought first: he realizes there is some big money involved and proposes you to keep the lottery bill (and cash it later) but "in compensation", he asks you to handle him any valuables you may carry then (money in cash, an MP3, your sun glasses, your italian shoes, shirt ot tie, .... anything goes!!)

If you are "hungry for money" (as almost always happens) you will accept, and agree, to give the poor man all you have "on board" inmediatly; after that you run to the lottery house to cash the large sum, to find minutes later that you have been a new victim of fraud.

And the list goes on and on ......

JSR