This is part two in our interview series with an ex-criminal who walks us through his process..
After the first talk I had with the guy I call Dee, the ex-criminal who walked me through how a street predator tests you before he moves, a lot of you wanted more. So did I. Because that first conversation was about the fast stuff, the mugging, the grab, the carjacking, the crimes that are over in under a minute. But there’s a whole other side to this that most people never think about, and it’s the side that empties bank accounts and cleans out houses without anybody ever throwing a punch.
Sometimes the crime isn’t the fast part. Sometimes the guy who bumps into you, buys you a drink, knocks on your door, or slides into your messages isn’t trying to rob you tonight. He’s setting the table. The meeting is the setup, and the robbery comes later, quiet, when your guard is all the way down and you never even see it as a robbery.
Same rules as last time. Dee isn’t his real name, I’m not saying where he’s from, some of what he told me he did and some of it is stuff he watched other guys run or heard them bragging about inside. This one got to me more than the first one, because the fast stuff you can at least see coming. This stuff smiles at you first.
“The Grab Is for Amateurs”
I opened by asking him about the difference between the quick crimes and the slow ones.
Me: Last time we talked about the fast stuff. Muggings, grabs. Is that where the real money is?
“Nah, man. That shit is for amateurs. Shit I did when I was younger and just starting out. Shit for guys that are desperate, strung out, need forty bucks right now. It’s high risk for almost nothing. You might get chased, shot, caught on camera, and for what, whatever’s in some dude’s pocket. The guys who are actually good at this, who don’t get caught, they’re patient. They understand the best robbery is the one the person don’t even know is a robbery till you’re long gone. You don’t take it off ’em. You get ’em to hand it over, or you just walk right in and pick it up ’cause they let you in the door.”
That right there is the whole shift you need to make in how you think about this. Most people have their guard set for the guy in the hoodie in the parking lot. They have zero guard set for the friendly one who’s nice to them. And the patient criminal knows it. He’s counting on it. Your instinct to protect yourself switches off the second somebody smiles and seems normal, and that off-switch is the thing he’s really after.
The One Who’s Into Your Apartment, Not You
I asked him about the scenario a lot of people don’t want to believe is real. The person you meet out, who seems interested in you, who’s actually interested in your stuff.
Me: Talk to me about meeting somebody out. A bar, an app, wherever. Where the point isn’t the person, it’s getting into their place.
He nodded like I’d hit on something. “Happens all the time. And I’m gonna be straight with you, it ain’t always some big violent thing like you see on T.V and shit. Most of the time it’s the opposite. Real smooth. You meet somebody, you’re charming, you’re easy, you’re whatever they want you to be for a couple hours. The whole time you’re not thinking about them. You’re thinking about that apartment. Do they live alone. What’d they say they do for work. That watch real. That a nice laptop on the counter. Where’s the bedroom, ’cause that’s where the jewelry and the cash and the spare keys are.”
Me: And then?
“And then you don’t do nothing that night, half the time. You use the bathroom and you’re gone a little longer than you should be. You look. You clock where stuff is. Maybe you grab something small they won’t miss for a week. Maybe you just learn the place, learn their schedule, and it gets hit later and they never once think about the nice person they brought home. Or you come back. Point is, you were never really there for them. You were doing a walk-through and they gave you the tour.”
I want to be careful here, because I’m not writing a manual for scumbags. I’m telling you this so you can see it. The tell is not hard to spot once you know it’s a thing. Somebody who seems more interested in your place than in you. Somebody pushing hard to come over the same night you met, to your spot, not a hotel, not their place. Somebody who takes a long trip to the bathroom and comes back a beat off. Somebody asking questions that don’t fit the vibe, do you live alone, what’s your building like, you work days or nights. On its own any one of those is nothing. Stacked together, that’s a walk-through, and you’re the one holding the door.
The protection isn’t complicated, it’s just uncomfortable. Slow it down. You don’t owe a stranger access to where you sleep on night one. Meet in public, keep it in public, and let the ones with bad intentions get bored and move on to somebody who won’t make them wait. The patient criminal hates patience aimed back at him.
How He Picked Who to Run It On
Every one of these long plays starts with picking the right mark, and Dee was blunt about who that is.
Me: Who’s the right person for the slow stuff? How’d you pick?
“Lonely. That’s number one, and it ain’t even close. Somebody who’s lonely will let you get close fast ’cause they want it to be real so bad they’ll ignore anything that don’t add up. They talk a lot, tell you everything about themselves in the first hour, ’cause they been waiting for somebody to listen. That’s a gift. Now I know your job, your ex, your money situation, whether you got family close, all of it, and I didn’t have to ask twice.”
He kept going.
“After that? People who show off. Flashing cash at the bar, the new car, the jewelry, posting every nice thing they buy. They’re telling me you got stuff worth my time. And people who live alone, obviously. And older folks, ’cause they were raised polite and they trust easier and they don’t want to believe somebody being nice to ’em is running a game. The nicer somebody is raised, honestly, the easier they are. Being a trusting person is beautiful until it’s the thing that gets you took.”
Read that twice, because it flips something most of us were taught. The traits that make you a good person, being trusting, being open, being kind to a stranger, are the exact traits a con reads as a green light. That doesn’t mean turn cold and paranoid. It means keep one small part of yourself back until a person has actually earned the rest. Real people don’t mind being made to earn trust. The only one who resents it is the one who was planning to abuse it.
The Ones Who Talk Their Way Through the Door
Then there’s the version that comes to your house directly, and Dee said this one is run on the vulnerable more than anybody.
Me: What about the ones who come right to the door? Not somebody you met. A stranger who talks his way in.
“Oh, that’s a whole hustle. Usually a team. Somebody knocks, real official, clipboard, maybe a vest, says they’re from the water company, the gas company, tree service, checking a leak, gotta look at something in the back. They’re friendly, they got a reason, they keep you talking. And while you’re standing there being polite, or worse, they walked you out to the backyard to look at something, their partner is already inside grabbing whatever’s close. Purse on the counter, cash, pills, jewelry, gone. You don’t even find out till hours later, sometimes days. And they mostly do it to old people, ’cause old people answer the door and want to help.”
This one is documented all over the country, and it hits seniors the hardest. Police call it a distraction burglary, and the recipe is always the same. A friendly reason to get your attention at the door, a partner you never see, and a house cleaned of anything grabbable while you’re being nice to a stranger in a vest. If your parents or grandparents are the type to open the door to anybody, this is the conversation to have with them today. Nobody legit is hurt by you saying “I’m going to call the company and verify, wait outside.” A real utility worker will wait. A crook will suddenly remember somewhere else to be. I laid out more of the signals people unknowingly send in my piece on the ways you invite a home invasion, and this one belongs right next to it.
The whole thing runs on the same fuel as everything else Dee’s told me across both these talks: politeness weaponized against you. The instinct to be nice, to not make a scene, to help. Good instincts. Bad instincts to run on autopilot when a stranger’s in front of you asking for access.
The Fraud Guys
Some of the sharpest people Dee said he met inside never carried a weapon in their life. They worked the phone and the keyboard.
Me: What about the guys running scams? Fraud, the romance stuff. Did you cross paths with them inside?
“Oh yeah. And I’ll tell you, some of them were the smartest dudes in there. No violence, nothing. Just patient as hell and good at reading people. The romance thing especially. Everybody’s heard of it now and people still fall for it every single day, ’cause it don’t feel like a scam. It feels like love. That’s the trick.”
Me: Walk me through how those guys thought about it.
“It’s all about the trust account. You put in before you take out. Weeks, months sometimes. You find somebody lonely online, you’re perfect for ’em, you text good morning and good night every day, you learn their whole life, you mirror ’em, you become the person they always wanted. You never rush the money. The money comes way later, after they’re all the way in, and it always comes wrapped in an emergency so they don’t stop and think. Medical thing, stuck overseas, some deal that’s about to fall through. And the smart ones isolate you first. ‘Your family don’t get us. Let’s keep this just between us.’ Once they got you cut off from everybody who’d tell you the truth, you’re theirs.”
Everything he described lines up exactly with what the FBI and the FCC warn about, which tells you these aren’t secrets, they’re a pattern that works over and over. The red flags are boringly consistent. Someone who declares strong feelings fast. Someone who always has a reason they can’t meet or video chat. Someone who wants to move off the app to private text quick. Someone who wants it kept secret from your people. And eventually, an urgent problem that only your money can fix, right now, before you have time to breathe. If any of that is happening to you or somebody you love, the FCC’s rundown on romance scams is a straight, no-nonsense place to point them, and the single best defense is embarrassingly simple: tell somebody. Say it out loud to a friend or your kid or your brother. Cons die in daylight. The whole game depends on you keeping it in the dark.
They’re Reading Your Whole Life Online
I asked Dee what’s changed since he came home, and he didn’t hesitate.
Me: What’s different now versus back in the day?
“People tell you everything now. You don’t gotta follow nobody around anymore. People are straight up fucking stupid. ‘On vacation for a week.’ Great, your house is empty, thanks dumbass. New TV, new ring, new truck, here’s a picture. Kids’ names, the dog’s name, where they work, the gym they go to at the same time every day. Back in the day I had to sit on somebody to learn their pattern. Now they hand you a map and don’t even know it. You can run the whole setup without leaving your couch.”
That’s the update on everything I’ve been telling readers for years. The oversharing that feels normal now is a gift to anybody running a long game, whether they want your house empty or your life mapped. This is worth its own hard look, which is why I wrote a whole guide on locking down what you and your kids put online. Every vacation countdown, every “look what I bought,” every check-in at the same coffee shop every morning is a line in a file somebody could be building on you. Not to make you paranoid. To make you quiet about the things that don’t need broadcasting.
What He Wants You to Walk Away With
I closed the same way I did last time. If he had the floor, what would he say.
Me: One thing. What do people need to hear?
“Slow down and tell your people. That’s two things but they go together. The whole long game only works if you rush and you keep it to yourself. Every scam, every setup, every one of ’em needs you to move fast and stay quiet. So do the opposite. Take your time with new people. Make ’em earn it. And run stuff past somebody who loves you before you open your door, your wallet, or your heart to a stranger. Ninety percent of what I ever saw work woulda died right there if the person had just said it out loud to one honest friend.”
That’s a man who spent years on the other side of it telling you the con only wins in a hurry and in the dark. Situational awareness isn’t only for the parking lot and the dark stairwell. It’s for the charming stranger, the friendly voice at the door, the perfect match who showed up right when you were lonely. The predator changed his clothes, but he’s asking the same question he always asks. Can I get away with it. And the answer is still up to you.
Dee’s last words to me, same as the man he is, were about as plain as it gets.
“Nobody I ever ran a game on thought it could happen to them. Every single one. That’s why it worked.”
Don’t be the one who’s sure it couldn’t be you. That certainty is the door he walks through.
