Park Slope Basketball Uniform Con Artists

millie · August 2007

Hi Everyone,
Is it just me or are other people annoyed by the constant barrage of teenage boys approaching them and asking them to sign their name and donate money for "basketball uniforms." These teenaged boys are coming to what they consider 'wealthy Park Slope' and harassing its residents by trying to con them into donating money for a fictional basketball team. I know this is New York and people stopping you on the street is just part of living here but yesterday afternoon I was sitting on the bench infont of Ozzies on 7th Ave and I was approached 5 times in 5 minutes! These boys simply pocket any money given to them and I have later seen some of them shopping in the video game store also on 7th. I suggest we start telling thse boys we know they are stealing from anyone who is stupid or naive enought to give them money and it is just a matter of time until someone gets the police involved so it would be best if they moved their con into another neighborhood or just got a part time job like other decent teenagers. I hate to sound so angry but I am really tired of this city's youth being allowed to act in any manner they want even if it includes illegal activities.

violet · August 2007

They approached me a while ago in Restoration Plaza (in Bed Stuy). So it's not exclusively a 'wealthy Park Slope' thing.
Is it illegal, what they're doing?

daniel · August 2007

How do you know that they are being fraudlent?

ilovecarbs · August 2007

Those kids piss me off. It's one thing to ask for financial support for a legit cause, but when you harass me while I've obviously got my hands full with groceries, then I see you an hour later buying stuff at gamestop, it doesnt' quite add up. I hope the next time they approach me, there's a cop nearby. I'm sick of this crap..get a summer job.

dw438 · August 2007

Hold on a sec. If you prosecute these kids doing one of the oldest scams in the books ... Barron and Sharpton will be at your door as quick as a call to the NY 1 assignment desk.

caaahyoko · August 2007

My favorite is the ones that are selling candy. All of them ONLY have peanut M&Ms!! ALWAYS! Why???

armchair_warrior · August 2007

we have a baseball team here in bensonhurst for years. same kids some of them are teenagers now. and younger brothers doing it too. while the adults sit near by as the kids run around asking for money for their team to go play in some island some where for their championships .

bs con artist. i never give them money.

treetopview · August 2007

Kids have been telling this story forever- everywhere in NYC. I like (and I am not being sarcastic at all) that have caught on to the fact that everyone realizes this is bs and say that they are selling candy not for a basketball team, but for themselves.

eggcream · August 2007

My husband and I were walking on 7th near Berkeley this afternoon and right up the block from Mr. Wonton we hear this screaming and a bunch of people looking up the block. We saw a guy who was yelling and his girlfriend coming down the block while two young kids, probably those mentioned above, going up the block towards the park. I think the guy grabbed one of the kids and he was yelling let go. Something happened cause the guy was yelling out loud for awhile.

bookistan · August 2007

There was a story in the NY Times a couple of months ago about the wholesale candy store in the Bronx where a lot of the kids who are "selling candy for their "sports team" buy the candy. The store owner has a hard time with a lot of these kids stealing the candy, big surprise...

santa · August 2007

this happens in every city in the country.

lasirena · August 2007

Just say "no."

lucky11 · August 2007

I wonder if girls' "sports teams" ever do this.

drano · August 2007

I offered to write a $10 check and send it to their coach a couple months ago, but they didn't have his contact info...or for that matter, even a vague notion of how he might be found. Too bad, but there's no way I'm giving kids cash on the street.

armchair_warrior · August 2007

lucky11 wrote: I wonder if girls' "sports teams" ever do this.

if they don't someone start one to milk the people out of their money.

magic1 · August 2007

It happens everywhere in New York as far as I can tell. Only once have I seen them doing it on a subway car, where it would actually kind of make sense!

daver · August 2007

I see it on the subway in Manhattan all the time on the weekends, when the tourists that don't know any better are out and about. We also got this all the time years back on the west coast, they would bring the kids into "upper class" neighborhoods in vans and send them door to door. I read an article once about the pimp/ho culture that had grown up around the "industry". Although I think that in NYC it is mostly entrepreneurial individuals.

homeowner · August 2007

There are a bunch of kids that are regularly on the 2, 3, 4 & 5 lines including one aspiring entrepreneur whose shtick is "I'm not doin' this for no basketball team, I'm doin' it to put some money in my pocket." I don't see it as a con. In my mind, you are getting a candy bar in exchange for your cash. To my mind this is far different than a con where someone is simply separating you from your money.

newsome · August 2007

LaSirena wrote: Just say "no."

This is my tactic. In fact, most any form of pan handler does not even register in my conciousness. They may as well be invisible.

ilovecarbs · August 2007

Newsome - I don't even bother saying no. It just irritates me. If most of us need to work to earn a living, why should they be exempt from it? I'd rather buy another pair of shoes than feed a crack habit or whatever they want to call it.

ljnd · August 2007

caaahyoko wrote: My favorite is the ones that are selling candy. All of them ONLY have peanut M&Ms!! ALWAYS! Why???

Those are the only kind that fall off the truck.

dakotas way · August 2007

It's not just in NYC that these kids come around. It's always the "Cavalry Baptist Church" they're getting funding for. I once asked a kid where it was and who the pastor was and his face went blank. Enough said.

But there are also adults who send little ones out in neighborhoods to sell. I was talking to one of the kids when he asked me what time it was, and he was supposed to be being picked up at that time and was in a complete panic. I was heading to a store and offered to drop these 10 & 11 year olds off and they were almost crying that the guy would see them get out of my car. For the littles I felt sorry.
The bigs ones are just con artists.
I won't buy from them. They can get a job somewhere.

lmboogie · August 2007

I hope the next time they approach me, there's a cop nearby.
pathetic! now we want to arrest children attempting the oldest hustle in town. why does this bother you so much? for the love of god, just say "no thank you"
let me guess... the kids are intimidating you.
i don't know how half of you survive in nyc.

willregistersoon · August 2007

I was in a bar on Smith St last week and a woman dressed as a nun, maybe in her 50's came in asking for donations. I asked her what it was for and she said some church/orphanage in the Catskills. She looked very disheveled and I felt a bit suspicous that maybe it was BS. Whatever - I gave a buck anyway. I wonder if she was for real. Anyone know or seen this woman?

homeowner · August 2007

She may have been one of the LeGrande "wives". They have been doing this since the early 70's. Here's an old article from the NYTimes about the family:

FOLLOWING UP
By JOSEPH P. FRIED
Published: September 1, 2002

A Job Description Contradicted by Killings
He ran a house of God, he said, but it turned out to be a house of horrors.
In the 1970's, women in black habits resembling those of nuns became a familiar sight in New York City as they solicited alms on the street and in the subway. Actually, they were from St. John's Pentecostal Church of Our Lord, which Devernon LeGrand, who called himself a bishop, presided over in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
Soon, the public learned that there was more to Mr. LeGrand than his dispatch of charity seekers whose garb confused many New Yorkers. In 1975, he and a son were convicted of raping a young woman in the four-story building at 222 Brooklyn Avenue that housed the church and the LeGrand family.
Then, amid bigger headlines in 1977, he and a stepson were convicted of charges that in 1975 they had beaten and stomped two teenage sisters to death in the building and dismembered their bodies. The men murdered the sisters, the prosecutors said, to keep them from testifying in the rape case. Later in 1977, Mr. LeGrand was convicted of having similarly murdered and dismembered his wife in 1970 in the Brooklyn building.
Now 77, Mr. LeGrand has served 27 years of his prison sentence (25 years to life) for the three murder convictions and the rape. He is to be considered for parole in October. He was first considered for parole in early 2001, after reaching the minimum 25 years of his term. He insisted he had not been involved in any of the crimes but had been the victim of lying witnesses and an ambitious prosecutor.
''I was a minister, and I liked a lot of women,'' he told the parole commissioners interviewing him at the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Wallkill, N.Y., where he is confined. But he said he had ''nothing to do with that woman,'' referring to the rape victim. He blamed the sisters' killings on the husband of one of them. And his own wife's killing? ''She's in Africa,'' he said. ''She left and went to Africa.''
In denying him release then, the parole commissioners said, ''Your conduct indicates a depraved indifference for human life and no respect for the law.''
As for 222 Brooklyn Avenue, it is the site these days of St. Joseph's Church of Christ and Home, with the Rev. Noconda LeGrand, a son of Mr. LeGrand, listed among the ministers.

millie · August 2007

Subject: Candy

I wasn't talking about those children/teenagers selling candy. They are at least offering you something for their money even if they are lying about where the money goes. That doesn't bother me at all. I was talking about the constant barrage of teengers wanting cash for "a basketball team" i.e for NOTHING. Buying something off people and being harassed 5 times in 5 minutes for money as a young woman who is sitting alone are two different things. I am not scared of these boys - I am just exhausted by them and irritated to have to put up with it a block from my home.

ilovecarbs · August 2007

[quote="lmboogie"]

I hope the next time they approach me, there's a cop nearby.
pathetic! now we want to arrest children attempting the oldest hustle in town. why does this bother you so much? for the love of god, just say "no thank you"
let me guess... the kids are intimidating you.
i don't know how half of you survive in nyc.

It bothers me because when I get home after a long day at work, god forbid I want to relax and be able to go to diner, groceries or go to the bank without being hustled by these kids every half a block. If I wanted to deal with this crap, I'd just ride the 6 train all night.

raw · August 2007

I'm annoyed by ANYONE I don't know who approaches me as I'm walking . My mother told me to never talk to strangers, so just as strangers feel entitled to intrude on my personal space I feel entitled to tell them to PISS OFF unless I am either in a VERY GOOD mood or if the strangers seem lost and desperate for directions.

Sometimes when I'm walking and talking with a friends, random strangers approach us with flyers and try to interrupt our conversation. Since when was interrupting people's conversations appropriate?

lmboogie · August 2007

I'm annoyed by ANYONE I don't know who approaches me as I'm walking

i'm gonna have to agree. on the other hand, i certainly don't feel the need to call the cops on them. i feel compassion toward anyone who is either begging or just trying to get their hustle on. no i don't give a shit where they spend the money because even if it's on crack, i can only imagine the hell and misery they are in. you don't have to give them shit but you should feel some compassion.

lmboogie · August 2007

Buying something off people and being harassed 5 times in 5 minutes for money as a young woman who is sitting alone are two different things. I am not scared of these boys - I am just exhausted by them and irritated to have to put up with it a block from my home.

when you put it like this, i completely understand and feel the same way.

your original post was angry, offensive and down right ignorant.

teafolks · August 2007

Whoa! A post that could have easily snuck into snarky discussions of soicio-economics or (dare I say it) race, but didn't. I love you Slopeboards. You are evolving!

And I do not mean that sarcastically.

Park Slope Basketball Uniform Con Artists

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