Havana Cuba. — I was at a neighbor’s house when a trembling old man who is a friend of hers arrived and told her: “They just cheated me out of 18,000 pesos, almost all my two-year savings.”
The man, whom my neighbor called Adrián, is 78 years old and lives in El Cerro, said that he was near the door of the building where he lives when two young men stopped in front of him and one of them said to him with great familiarity: “Don’t you do you remember me? I am the son of Frómeta”.
The old man explained that he mistook him for the son of a former co-worker, and he pretended to remember him. He then asked her how she was getting by, if he did anything extra to increase his retirement, and if he had “some little money put away.” When he answered in the affirmative, he told her that they needed someone trustworthy to collect a debt from the ball gamebecause they could not do it, because they were also bankers.
At this point in the narrative, as I was becoming interested in the story, I began to record what the old man was saying with my phone.
“They invited me to follow them to a nearby place. They rented a vehicle that took us to a building that used to be an inn, near the La Nacional funeral home, on Infanta y Benjumeda, quite a distance from my house.
They opened a door with a key and the son of this Frómeta told me: “This is where I live”. He explained everything I had to say to give credibility to the charge, which, according to them, was for a bet on number 70 of the ball (the coconut, he stressed) for 2,000 pesos, for which he would receive 700,000 pesos and they would give me 30,000, an amount temptress.
They told me that the one who had to pay them was an elderly person, who spent a lot of money gambling, betting hard, and squandering it with young women, and that he would soon travel abroad and they feared they would run out of their 700,000 pesos.
Shortly after, said subject appeared with a portfolio. When I opened it, I saw that it contained several hundred pesos in 1,000 bills. They told me that before giving me the money, I had to sign a paper as proof that I had been paid.
They asked me to please the banker and play cards. At the end of the game, which the man lost, he withdrew because, according to what he said, he had to go get some change and he would come with the amount to be paid, but before that another receipt was drawn up that we both signed.
They later added that to receive that amount, they had to legitimize that amount of money before the other player with some amount that would give the opponent reliability, but they did not have that much cash and they asked me to symbolically lend them something.
One of them accompanied me back to my house in a rented car, then we went to an ATM to withdraw more money and complete the 18,000 pesos and returned to the place.
Upon arrival, I sensed that there was something shady. I stated that I did not want to charge anything. Then they intimidated me and took the money and forced me to sign another piece of paper saying that I was collecting not only a gambling debt, but also for drug sales.
The one who identified himself as Miguel invited me to come with him to look for another amount that was kept nearby by someone he called on the phone. Frightened, I went with him: the only thing that interested me was to leave, because I feared for my life.
The man, more agile than me, stepped forward and left me behind. When I walked to the corner where he turned, I didn’t see a sign of him.
I went back to the room and when I knocked on the door a man who said he was the owner opened it for me. He told me that those guys that I described had rented him the room, but they had left without paying him what was agreed. He explained to me that he did not rent, that he did it out of economic necessity, because he had four children to support.
There, on the floor, he found the papers that I had signed, and he kept them, according to him, to defend himself against any investigation. In reality, he prevented me from having evidence to denounce the trap into which he had fallen to the police ”.
Cases similar to Adrián’s are frequent in Havana. And it is that scams and scams, mainly to the elderly, are the order of the day. That, not to mention assaults and robberies with force.
