Crime & Safety

"Hi, I Live Right Down the Block... Give Me Money - and Never Mind About That Warrant."

Moraga police stop and interview a pair of door-to-door solicitors and, lo and behold, one is a wanted man.

 

The recent influx of "needy students" and "recovering bad boys" and "magazine sales specialists" flooding parts of Lamorinda has neighbors speed-dialing police and at least one city discussing preventative measures.

Patch has written that several groups, changing their names often and usually incorporating feel-good words like "freedom" and "All-American," are actually thinly disguised fronts for door-to-door marketing machines who bring pumped up "sales associates" into "rich" areas to make aggressive door-to-door sales.

Find out what's happening in Lamorindawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The "students" or "kid down the block" brought to your neighborhood may actually be from Houston or Little Rock, and come equipped with believable stories meant to put residents at ease and digging into their pockets.

More believable associates can make hundreds of dollars in a given neighborhood -- and see little of it as the money is turned over to professional "handlers" at the end of their "shift." Many of the kids are runaways, or have had run-ins with the law -- as was recently determined during a recent stop in Moraga.

Find out what's happening in Lamorindawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Police there were called to Country Club Dr. and St. Andrews Dr. at 5:45 p.m. on March 30 to make contact with two solicitors canvassing the country club. For a couple of "neighborhood kids" at least one of the pair got around, a warrant for failure to appear on another matter in Orange County popping up when his identity was checked by police. The solicitor was issued a citation and then released after signing a promise to appear.

Canvassers were also in the Rheem Valley Manor and Campolindo Estates neighborhoods that evening, with neighbors reporting seeing police cars in attendance.

Regular readers may remember the case of Elizabeth Vuori of Lafayette, found raped and smothered to death in her Moraga Boulevard home on Dec. 10, 2005.

A traveling magazine salesman from Missouri was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing the 90-year-old woman, then taking $18,000 in savings bonds and $200 in cash and Vuori's keys before leaving her residence.

Richard Craig McNew, 34, a convicted felon from St. Louis, worked for Overachievers, a Missouri magazine-subscription company in Lafayette that evening canvassing for magazine subscriptions. The city has spent time recently fine-tuning its ordinance covering door-to-door sales.

Patch Advice: We can't tell you who to give your money to, but if you must hand over cash or a check to someone standing on your doorstep, please try to find out who they are and if they have the permit they need to get before they can solicit you.


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