I keep notes on all the usual tourist scams and knew about the ‘gold ring’ scam. But I had never encountered it personally—till today. We were walking to the Musee D’Orsay, and a benign-looking elderly woman walking toward us suddenly bent down in front of us, plucked a ‘gold ring’ from the sidewalk and asked my companion if she’d dropped it. I said, ‘it’s the gold ring scam; she’ll give you the ring and then ask for money.’
This oh-so-polite scamster showed my companion that the ring wouldn’t fit her and pressed it upon my companion. “Don’t take it”, I warned. “She’ll want money for giving you this ‘treasure’.” My companion nevertheless took the ring, and we turned to walk away. For a fleeting moment, I thought I had wrongly misjudged this nice-looking old woman because she should have asked for money by this point. But nope, my skepticism was rewarded because within a few steps, the woman had scurried back to my companion, supplicating for money in exchange for giving her this ‘valuable gold ring’. My companion handed her back the ring and told her to sell this valuable ring for lots of money, and we walked away in peace.
We recounted this episode later to our hotel concierge who told us her visiting Italian boyfriend had encountered this very scam (different street, different benign-looking scam artist, but likely a ‘gold’ ring of the same ilk), fell for it, and found himself relieved of 20 euro. And yes, in case you were wondering, you get more valuable jewelry in a CrackerJack box for a lot less than 20€.
![](http://<a href=http://www.aspca.org/now_cruelty_pledge_badge><img src=http://www.aspca.org/images/content/pagebuilder/647613.jpg alt="Pledge to Fight Animal Cruelty" border=0>){kind=link}