[US] neighbor’s slick shortchange con

I was selling a $50 clock. A woman who lives in my apartment building emailed from out of town asking if she could mail a check and have her next-door neighbor pick it up. I said she should probably examine the item first. She replied that she’s “very trusting.” I still requested cash.

A few days later she showed up in person. Older, chatty without being warm. She said she had only twenties but was “totally fine with $60.” She kept up the talk — lobby renovations, how she usually keeps $10s on hand, how her husband would probably say, “Why do we need another clock?” She added, curiously, that she needed something “with a larger handprint” for where she planned to put it. She meant footprint.

I gave her two fives in advance. (Don’t do this, of course. Get paid for something, announce the amount you were given, then give the buyer their change.)

Still chatting, she laid down two sloppy, commingled piles of bills near her overflowing handbag and said something like, “Let’s see, I take this, this is yours, I keep this” — as if confusion was already a given. Then she handed me two twenties and two fives. “Is that right?” she asked. I counted aloud: twenty, forty, fifty. I saw the fives, paused, but didn’t register the shortchange until a good thirty seconds after she left.

She’d had exact change all along. The patter, the supposed trust and desire to overpay, the staged confusion — well done, lady. Any hint of a chance that this was not deliberate? I doubt it, and I even instinctively checked the shelf where she’d been standing after she left. Is this a known technique or style? Any other comments about this would be welcome. I’m more impressed than angry!