Fictional Credit Card Number Wins Stunning $2.5 Million Nonexistent Prize – August 2, 2011
• Tuesday, June 28 3:06 p.m. A youth believed to have stolen a candy bar made good his escape, but in the complexity of the heist, overlooked a crucial detail – taking his backpack with him when he escaped the crime scene. When store employees finally looked inside the pack a few days later, they found “various pills.”
5:32 p.m. A man exorcised his ambient issues behind the donut shop, wielding “a sock filled with unknown substance” and threatening passersby. As police responded, someone reported that the sock appeared to be stuffed with rocks, but when they got there he had surrendered it to someone who had left the area.
• Wednesday, June 29 7:51 a.m. A woman went out to her car at 16th and J streets to find the window smashed and her purse taken. She then learned that one of the credit cards had been used at a Valley West gas station overnight.
9:10 a.m. A citizen reported that someone called him asking for his credit card numbers, so he rattled off some bullshit number that he just made up and surprise, surprise – the number “matched” some imaginary list, and he had won $2.5 million! The scammer, apparently not yet aware that the tables had been turned, said he would deduct a $250 fee and come by the guy’s house at noon to drop off the two-and-a-half mil. Police advised the winner not to contact the scammer and to call if he really showed up.
9:51 a.m. An Alliance Road resident reported his unlocked $250 mountain bike stolen from outside his apartment. As it happened though, he had just recovered a different bicycle which he said he had reported stolen Jan. 14. The guy who had the previously stolen bike said he bought it for $250 at a pawn shop in Eureka.
10:40 a.m. A Buttermilk Lane resident called about a scam attempt she had received by mail.
2:14 p.m. A Bayside Road resident reported receiving an unexpected check in the mail for $2,200.
3:02 p.m. A woman brought police checks which had been sent to her mother from out of the country. She hadn’t sent any money to the source.
• Friday, July 1 5:58 a.m. A suspected nutjob was reported flinging a black satchel against walls at a Sunny Brae shopping center.
8:03 a.m. A possibly rabid skunk occupied a porch on Spruce Way and didn’t want to move.
10:41 a.m. A man came to the station complaining that he was being “treated unfairly” at a Plaza bar. He was told not to go back there.
12:59 p.m. A woman said her elderly mother had received five phone calls so far this day from someone claiming to represent “Donald Trump Corp.” who was going to fly out to Arcata from Las Vegas with two state troopers to deliver money. She was told to have the phone company block the caller, and that extra patrols would be ordered for the mom’s house. An officer called the TrumpCo rep’s number and it went to voice mail with a Jamaican-accented woman’s voice.
4:32 p.m. Someone tampered with locks at a Uniontown business.
4:48 p.m. Arcata Fire personnel cleaning up their new fire station site off Sunset Avenue found all kinds of mail for different addresses which looked like it had been stolen. Police re-mailed the mail to its addressees.
5:44 p.m. A man claimed that he’d dropped a $100 bill on the sidewalk at a Uniontown shopping center when a man swooped down and snatched it. The two argued briefly before the Benjamin bagger boogied.
10 p.m. When a gardener mowed a Stewart Avenue lawn, the mower kicked up a rock that shattered the outside pane of a sliding window. On arriving home, the resident momentarily thought a burglary had occurred, but it was just a wacky mixup.
• Saturday, July 2 3:40 a.m. Police found an unoccupied car with its ignition exposed in Redwood Center – it didn’t take Scotland Yard to suspect an unreported theft.
9:35 a.m. An Alliance Road business reported the theft of $650 the previous day. A clerk who had been “reorganizing the till” apparently left it exposed to several customers at one point.
1:08 p.m. A tipsy-sounding man called 911 saying that he had just bought his wife a new car. She works at a county agency, and he said the 911 dispatcher needed to tell her to go to the car dealership to pick up her car when she arrives for work. He was told to contact her place of employment rather than 911.
5:57 p.m. A Diamond Drive resident noticed people sleeping in a car by his mailbox, the vehicle’s trunk held shut with a confidence-inspiring bungee cord. The resident lodged an inquiry as to their sleeping habits, earning a harsh rebuke, as though the streetside slumberers were operating a mobile argument service. They left, but afterward the resident thought back to a few days earlier, when a different sleazemobile had been seen loitering in the area, and wondered whether area houses were being cased for burglary.
7:49 p.m. A beige and white bag of kittens was reported on the side of the road near Redwood park. Police couldn’t find it.
