What happened to Adrian

On June 16th, 2016 Adrian was turning North on Abeline off of Mississipi in his car when he saw an ambulance with its lights on heading towards him. In an attempt to make way for the ambulance, Adrian reversed and was involved in a hit-an-run collision with another driver who left the scene of the accident. This left Adrian with a cracked bumper and a broken left tail-light. Adrian submitted a police report online for insurance purposes, but never got any response.

Working full-time as a produce clerk at a local grocery store where he’d been subject to cuts to his hours, Adrian was struggling to save up the $500 he needed to fix his car and pay his deductible. Finally, he got his tax return and had enough.

On May 25th, Adrian was fueling up his car at the fuel-center near where he works, when he was approached by an auto-scammer who shouted at Adrian and pressured him into initially paying him for a $300 “repair” only for the cost to fix the damage to rise to $500 and finally demanding $530 from Adrian.

This autoscammer was aggressive and said, “I don’t take no for an answer.” when he harrassed Adrian. He told Adrian that he would “Fix that dent for you. You’ll save money, you’ll be happy, and they won’t even notice.” In the face of all this pressure, Adrian was coerced into “paying” for his “repair”. Only to find out that the scammer would end up applying duct tape over the damage and spray-painting it with orange and blue paint.

Just four days later on May 29th, the autoscammer approached Adrian while he was heading to his car for lunch in the parking lot at work. He said, “Thank god I found you.” and claimed to have found a matching bumper and taillight. He also told Adrian that he was going to reimburse him $3,200 + $1,650 (the damage cost that was assessed at Caliber Collisions) He offered Adrian a warranty and a business card. He took Adrian to a nearby Keybank and then 7-11 to have Adrian withdraw more money to pay for his scam. Adrian tried to tell him he didn’t have any more money, but the scammer was persistent and manipulated Adrian to gain his trust while putting him in a high-pressure situation to exploit him.

The scammer took advantage of this situation and of Adrian’s disability to have him withdraw $100, and after he’d brought Adrian back to work attempted to pressure him into using Adrian’s now declined debit card to fuel up his truck while trying to push Adrian to “join his business” while asking if Adrian had any credit cards. Adrian recorded the name that had been used by the scammer (Mitch) , the license plate from his truck (447-SRC), and a fake phone number.

Adrian went to the Aurora Police Department to report what had happened to him, and was directed to call Officer Larson, who is supposed to handle fraud and scam cases. He called Larson and gave him a description of the scammer and his vehicle with the plate number. Larson asked Adrian if he was sure about it, and told Adrian that [APD] won’t make any promises.

On Friday, June 2nd Adrian encountered the scammer again while in the parking lot at work, and he took pictures of the truck and called Officer Larson, but only reached his voicemail. Adrian tried to call APD dispatch, but they just told him to call Larson instead.

On Wednesday, June 7th Adrian went to the APD office again to try and speak to someone about what was happening. Instead of listening to Adrian’s account of events, cut him off twice saying, “It’s not a scam.” Adrian stormed off furious at this.

Adrian called Officer Larson to try and express his frustration with his visit to the office, and Larson defended the actions of the Officer at the front desk, and told Adrian that because he is autistic, that it would be difficult to process the case. Officer Larson has since let the case go cold and not called in months.

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