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Woman Helps Pregnant Beggar, Regrets It Later

Woman Helps Pregnant Beggar, Regrets It Later November 27, 2022Leave a comment

The Truth Comes Out

She stared at the woman as she patiently waited. Had she been concealing the truth from everyone for all this time? Her thoughts were running, trying to find an explanation. Was she being conned? Was she at risk?

She looked in front of her and saw the beggar enter the vehicle. And right then, she knew. She had to follow her and find out the truth. As she uncovered the big mystery, she could have never suspected that she would expose an enormous web of lies.

It Happened In San Diego

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Melissa Smith, a woman from the Californian city of San Diego, was running some errands like any other day when she saw the beggar again. But that day things would be different. Melissa decided to listen to her gut and get to the bottom of the issue.

She was pumping gas by her vehicle when she saw her, along with her little boy. She was close to the shopping center. But then, she saw something: she began walking. When he noticed their direction, she immediately grabbed her phone.

Same Spot Every Day

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Every day, the beggar stood at the same spot. It was near a shopping plaza called East Lake Village Center. The shopping center had everything one could wish for, from restaurants to goodwill, along with stylists, grocery stores, clothing stores, and dentists.

The beggar knew that the place was always filled with people who would be more than willing to do a good deed of the day and give her some change. However, there was something she didn't count on. There was someone watching her closely.

Gut Feeling

Public Domain

As you may know, California is one of the states with the most homeless population in the country. However, among them there can be con artists sometimes. Melissa was well aware of this, but she didn't feel like this woman was up to anything devious.

When she started spotting her every weekend at the same spot, all she could think about was how sorry she felt for that pregnant lady who had to beg the passers-by for money. She didn't listen to her gut feeling, and that was her mistake.

Compassion

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The lady would hang around the shopping center for hours and hours, but she wasn't always by herself. Melissa sometimes saw a man with her; she thought he was the kid's dad. They were an usual sight for people who used to hang around the area.

​Naturally, every now and then a passerby felt compassion for them and gave them some change or warm drinks and sandwiches. One day, Melissa couldn't resist her curiosity anymore; she felt like she had to find out the truth about that woman.

Suspicious

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Melissa hadn't suspected anything weird about the lady until one day. It was the same day her compassion for her became insurmountable. After seeing there regularly for two months, she realized that she was probably in a really desperate situation.

She had never seen a pregnant woman begging on the street. Standing there under the sun for all those hours had to be exhausting, she thought. But then, all of a sudden, she noticed something that raised her suspicions.

She Had A Plan

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The lady seemed to be an absolute master when it came to the art of begging. Melissa had the suspicion that sometimes her gestures and words were almost too polished, like it was all a gimmick of some sort.

And when she put her faculties to work, she always got what she wanted. Who could have denied a pregnant lady in need some spare change? "Please Help," the sign said. Obviously, this pulled many people's heartstrings. But was it all a facade, or was it real? Melissa was determined to find out. However, she would regret it soon.

Something Strange

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Melissa lived close to the shopping center, but that was the first time she had visited it at that particular time of the day. Usually, she went to run her errands at mid morning. But that evening, she decided to go there for a walk.

However, she noticed something strange upon her arrival. The pregnant lady wasn't where she used to stay. Where could she be? She hoped she was alright. She also realized that she had almost ran out of gas. She drove to the gas station nearby and pulled over. That's when she saw it.

A Car

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Melissa noticed a face she had seen before. The pregnant lady was holding her sign, standing behind the shopping center, hoping for any late passerby to give her a few more pennies before going home.

But she noticed something else. All of a sudden, one car drove straight in the pregnant lady's direction. What was going on? The car stopped right in front of her. Now, the situation just felt incredibly fishy to Melissa. Had she seen something she shouldn't have?

Flashy Ride

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Melissa couldn't believe her eyes. She squinted her eyes to grasp all the details and her stomach dropped to her knees. The woman's partner was driving the car. But that wasn't all there was to it.

The car the man was driving was nothing more and nothing less than a Mercedes Benz. That had to cost a lot of money. Where did the woman or her partner even get such a flashy car? Right then and there, Melissa felt like she had to jump into action.

Proof

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“They were leaving, ​and I noticed they went in a Mercedes Benz. I thought, ‘Wow, a Mercedes Benz?’” explains Melissa. Not only that, but the car also appeared to be brand-new. Melissa jumped into her car and followed the couple. As she documented the whole process with her phone, her car rolled up beside the couple, who were laughing.

“Lo and behold, they were in front of us. Here they are, counting money, laughing. Their little boy is not in a car seat or a seat belt. He’s all the way in the front seat with them,” Melissa said. She couldn’t have felt more betrayed. She knew that she needed to get to the bottom of this and warn everyone. But she could never have known how deep this case really went.

Caught Red-Handed

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Melissa followed the car to another shopping center, not far from the first. It seemed like this couple had everything carefully planned out. The vehicle came to a halt, and to Melissa’s amazement, the pregnant beggar got out and started to fool everyone again.

“She sits there with the sign. He goes (and) parks the Mercedes. They put up the sign, and not less than five minutes; here she is getting money from all these people,” Melissa said angrily. Now, she had caught her, but she couldn’t have known that the authorities would soon be involved. Melissa was scratching dangerously at the surface of something much more sinister.

Enraged

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As Melissa got closer to the woman and her little boy, she started snapping pictures. But when the pregnant beggar spotted her, she grew vicious. She started yelling and screaming, lifting a huge rock threateningly. “Next thing I know, she picked up this big boulder,” Melissa said, “I don’t know if pregnant people can do that, but it was pretty big over her head and coming at me with this rock.”

A witness saw everything and decided to call the cops, but when the beggar knew what was happening,​ she grabbed her little boy and took off. What the woman didn’t know was that Melissa wasn’t about to let what she had seen go.

Undisclosed

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Melissa decided that she wasn’t going to let the woman get away with bamboozling the public so easily. She called a news station and posted everything on social media. She wanted everyone to know how they had been deceived and to warn everyone in the area not to fall for this master beggar’s plan.

The news station was so intrigued by the story that they decided to run the plates from the car Melissa had taken pictures of. To their surprise, it stated that the car was in a woman’s name, and also, there was an address that was undisclosed. She had no idea that others had their eyes on this particular panhandler, too.

Breaking News

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Journalists quickly followed the lead, and this began an exciting spiral. The apartment complex where the woman resided was called Encinitas Heights Apartments, and residents said rent is $2,500 a month.

 After a couple of attempts, no one answered the door. But then, they received a phone call. The couple living in the apartment had just moved in, while the couple before them had just picked up and left. ​

Viral Content

Public Domain

Smith had documented everything. Social media and the news had become rather interested in the mysterious pregnant beggar and broadcasted the story for everyone to see. 

“I feel bad. Don’t give these people money. They don’t need it. They’re driving a Benz,” Smith said. But while the investigation was still infuriating people, one call made journalists spring into action.

Another Witness

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Another witness had spotted the panhandler. Rebecca was doing her grocery shopping and running a few household errands when she thought she recognized the beggar she’d seen on TV at another shopping center. 

She immediately called the bro​adcasters to inform them that she knew the infamous panhandler’s location. Minutes later, Emily Valdez arrived at the center.

Perplexed

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When Valdez was told that the beggar was still in the area, she quickly got to her feet and searched the center for the mystery woman. But when she found her, she was perplexed. Wasn’t this woman supposed to be pregnant?

Only two days had passed since Melisa Smith had taken the pictures, but this lady in front of her was holding a baby.

“Is This You?”

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The camera crew and Valdez approached the woman. “Is this you, begging?” Valdez asked the woman as she held up her phone with the picture of the pregnant beggar. The woman looked at the picture for some time and then said she didn’t speak English. Had they just caught her?

The woman who was holding the baby was also with a little boy who looked exactly like the one in the picture, and then the father arrived.

80% Match

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He dismissed the camera crew and took his family through the parking lot. The camera crew documented them going inside a minivan with dealer plates. 

But the journalists had another plan up their sleeves. They ran facial recognition on both women, and the results matched them at 80%. But something made Valdez think that there was more to the whole situation.

Tell-Tale Detail

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The man had first spoken in Spanish but then briefly said something to the panhandler in a second language. Little did he know that this detail was about to blow the whole case wide open.

Valdez replayed the recording and listened carefully when she heard the language. Then, she got on the phone to call in the experts.

Retired Detective

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Leslie Albright carefully watched the video that had been taken by Valdez and her camera crew. She had retired recently from her post as a detective at the San Diego Police Department, where she had served as a specialist in underground crime rings for 25 years.

But there was something about this case that had her nodding her head, and it suddenly hit her that this was no ordinary panhandler.

Beneath The Surface

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The woman whose actions had infuriated millions on social media was about to have her scam exposed, but there was more to the story. 

There was an indication that there was a growing problem in the community. Underneath California’s slick and hip exterior, there was a dark underbelly growing bigger by the day. One Redditor was determined to expose what was really going on at great risk.

Given Away

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Leslie had seen a lot of crime in her life, so when she heard the man speak, she suspected that something was up.

She recognized the language that he had spoken in the recording taken by Valdez’s camera crew right away, and their modus operandi fitted many that she had seen before perfectly. But what else was the couple hiding?

Hustling

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According to Albright, the couple is tied to an organized crime ring in California. They had entered the country illegally and committed crimes on a daily basis. They are known to reside in expensive apartment blocks and have numerous cars to enable them to pull their scams on their unsuspecting targets. 

It is likely that the couple is not a couple at all, and the panhandler’s “pregnancy” was used as a tactic to elicit sympathy from the kindhearted locals. But what other crimes are the ring heading? — there is more to the story than meets the eye.

Always Moving

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The problem with this particular group is that they rarely stay in one place for long, and this makes it difficult for the authorities to pinpoint them. 

As soon as they get wind that someone is onto them, they pack up and move on. This is exactly what had happened with this particular pair of suspects. But one unnamed man was about to shine a light on the mysterious couple and endanger himself in the process.

Inside Information

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One man came forward after seeing the video of the panhandler on the news and revealed all the details on Reddit. 

“I had a friend of a friend tell me that they knew them and that they’re just a hustling pair of Con Artists whose families conned their way into the country,” he wrote. He also went on to say that he knew the details of the woman’s dark past and that her life had not been a pleasant one. 

Forced Into Crime

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According to the Redditor’s inside information, the now-infamous woman had been forced to work within the crime ring from a young age. 

After he leaked the information online, he removed himself from Reddit for fear of what would be done to him if the men who ran the crime ring ever found out his identity.

The Bottom Rung

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It was also revealed that the woman seen in the footage often pretends to be pregnant with a foam prop hidden under her shirt, and this helps her to collect over $500 per day — and there are many other women like her. 

The inner workings of the organized crime ring are complex, and there’s a strict hierarchy with the men who head the operation at the top.

Promises

Modesto Bee

Women who have no source of income turn to the crime ring to survive. The crime bosses promise food and shelter to the women who are dispatched all over the country each morning.

The women’s illicit panhandling practices ensure that the higher-ups have enough money to live lavish lives. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Taking Advantage

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It’s not just the women who are forced to panhandle – children are dispatched with them to garner more sympathy from the unsuspecting public.

“They’ll use the babies, children, anyway they can… the children will not go to school because their job and their future is the Family Business,” Albright said in an interview. These children grow up in a life of crime. 

A Growing Problem

YouTube

Since Melissa’s story went viral, the syndicate tied to the panhandling women in America has spread as far as Seattle. Even during the lockdown in 2020, the panhandlers continued to operate. 

After a story about them was published by news station KIRO 7, the syndicate backed up and disappeared for a while – only to return nine months later. 

Easy Money

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The KIRO news team followed four panhandlers and filmed them counting a stack of bills before they boarded a bus. They spoke to each other in Romanian and Romani and discussed how much money they’d made that day while the little boy who accompanied them played on an iPhone. 

“The niece got 100 bucks. We need more dollars,” one woman said. After a 70-minute bus ride, the four women and boy got off and walked to an apartment complex that charges as much as $2,220 for rent per month.

Scammers

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“People should know, there’s PLENTY of service and organizations that exist to help people and ESPECIALLY for women with children,” the anonymous Redditor pointed out.  “They’re taking advantage of them all as well as scamming people at the parking lot entrances. Neither of them is reporting the money they’re making from her begging, and both are claiming poverty to get state and federal assistance.”

Shortly after writing the post, the anonymous Reddit informant started to receive strange and threatening phone calls. He was in danger, but he had one more thing to add before he disappeared off Reddit for good.

A Word Of Caution

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“They might be up and trying this scam again, or it might be another woman. Either way, call the cops on them, making sure to tell the dispatch that they’re “the BMW scammers” so they’re identified, and the state can start the proper deportation proceedings against them… don’t help any of them or give money to any of the panhandlers you might see,” the unnamed Redditer cautioned.

Investigators are still trying to find the head of operations, and people have become more careful of the people they give their money to since the story of the “pregnant” panhandler went viral. Who knows what other crimes are tied to this Californian crime ring?

In order to protect the privacy of those depicted, some names, locations, and identifying characteristics have been changed and are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.