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badswife

08-11-2002, 10:27 AM

I GOT THIS E-MAIL LAST NIGHT, DON'T KNOW IF IT IS TRUE OR NOT, BUT ATLEAST WE CAN BE ON THE LOOK-OUT!;)

> Don't forget to tell your teenage daughters....
> >
> >PLEASE PASS IT ALONG TO YOUR WOMEN FRIENDS!!!
> >
> >I was approached yesterday afternoon around 3:30pm
> in the Walmart parking
> >lot at University Drive (Peoria), by two males,
> asking what kind of
> >perfume I was wearing. Then they asked if I'd like
> to sample some
> >fabulous scent they were willing to sell me at a
> very reasonable rate. I
> >probably would have agreed had I not received an
> eMail some week
> >ago, warning of a "Wanna smell this neat perfume?"
> scam.
> >
> >The men continued to stand between parked cars, I
> guess to wait for
> >someone else to hit on. I stopped a lady going
> towards them, pointed at
> >them, and told her about how I was sent an e-mail
> at work about someone
> >walking up to you at the malls or in parking lots,
> and asking
> >you to SNIFF PERFUME that they are selling at a
> cheap price.
> >
> >THIS IS NOT PERFUME - IT IS ETHER!
> >
> >When you sniff it, you'll pass out. And they'll
> take your wallet, your
> >valuables, and heaven knows what else.
> >
> >If it were not for this e-mail, I probably would
> have sniffed the
> >"perfume". But thanks to the generosity of an
> emailing friend, I was
> >spared whatever might have happened to me. I
> wanted to do the same for
> >you.
> >
> >PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG TO ALL YOUR WOMEN FRIENDS,
> AND PLEASE BE ALERT,
> >AND AWARE!!

chort1313

08-11-2002, 10:38 AM

http://www.snopes2.

Relax, this isn't a real danger. No one has reported having been robbed in this manner, save for one woman in 1999 whose claim was suspect (for reasons we discuss below). This legend doesn't even really describe a plausible scenario -- despite what books and TV shows may depict, rendering a person unconscious from a mere sniff or two of some substance is not easy to do. Ether is nasty, volatile stuff that requires more than a few brief inhalations to knock a person out. In fact, it's hard to think of any substance that could produce the instant unconsciousness described here.

This legend appears to have begun in late 1999 with a widely-circulated Internet message that used one specific news report as a basis for implying that ether-wielding robbers were a potentially widespread menace:

[Collected on the Internet, 1999]
Watch out-this is for real!

I just heard on the radio about a lady that was asked to sniff a bottle of perfume that another woman was selling for $8.00 (In a mall parking lot). She told the story that it was her last bottle of perfume that regularly sells for $49.00 but she was getting rid of it for only $8.00, sound legitimate?

That's what the victim thought, but when she awoke she found out that her car had been moved to another parking area and she was missing all her money that was in her wallet (total of $800.00). Pretty steep for a sniff of perfume!

Anyway, the perfume wasn't perfume at all, it was some kind of ether or strong substance to cause anyone who breathes the fumes to black out.

SO, Please beware . . . Christmas time is coming and we will be going to malls shopping and we will have cash on us.

Ladies, please don't be so trusting

The incident described above was "real" in the sense that a Mobile, Alabama woman claimed it happened to her on 8 November 1999 and reported the alleged robbery to the police, but it's false in that no evidence ever surfaced to verify her story.

Bertha Johnson, a 54-year-old Mobile woman, claimed that at about 2:00 PM on Monday, 8 November, she had pulled into the parking lot of a bank when a woman approached her car and offered to sell her bottles of cologne that ordinarily retail for $45 for the low price of $8. Ms. Johnson says she sniffed a sample of the cologne, and the next thing she knew it was around half an hour later, she was standing with her keys in her hand at a wicker store two miles away from the bank, her head was throbbing, and $800 she had been carrying ($500 of her own money plus $300 of her employer's) was missing. However, her claim had some surface implausibilities:

Ms. Johnson was allegedly robbed on her way into a bank. How did the robber know she had a significant amount of money on her? Not everybody walks into a bank with a wad of cash -- was the robber simply choosing random victims in the hopes of hitting on one who did? If so, how come no one else has reported being the victim of such a robbery attempt? We have to assume that this is a brand new crime scheme, and that the perpetrator hit the jackpot on the very first try (and apparently hasn't used it since).

As Dr. Matthew Barnhill, a toxicologist with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences noted, it's difficult to imagine what substance could have been used to cause someone to pass out so quickly from a single sniff. Any drug or chemical that could immediately knock a victim out merely through his inhaling it (rather than ingesting or injecting it) would have to be quite potent indeed.

We might also consider that Ms. Johnson was carrying money belonging to her employer at the time of the alleged robbery, and that pretending to be robbed while carrying someone else's money is a classic theft scheme. As well, when she allegedly "came to" following the assault, she was not sitting in her car, but "standing up" with her "keys in her hand." Maybe she did regain consciousness in stages, passing through a state similar to sleepwalking before becoming fully aware again. On the other hand, waking up in a car isn't likely to draw much attention; but showing up in a parking lot, wandering around in a dazed state, will almost certainly create a few believable witnesses who will remember having "found" a crime victim.
Sure enough, several weeks later the toxicology reports concerning tests run on blood and urine samples taken from Ms. Johnson immediately after the alleged attack did not indicate the presence of any unusual or abnormal substance in her system. The case remains officially open, but this one smells like a scam cooked up by Ms. Johnson to abscond with her employer's money.

Now, in true urban legend fashion, this tale has gone from a news report of an alleged victim's unsubstantiated story to a general warning that this sort of thing might happen to you to a specific warning that this type of robbery is actually happening. It isn't happening though, and it probably never did, not even once.

It's interesting to see how little occurrences that aren't even part of the scenario described are now being reported as evidence of narrow brushes with these non-existent robbers. For example, the following was prefaced to the example cited at the top of the page:

Some of you got this email some weeks ago like me. I just wanted to pass along that I was approached yesterday afternoon at around 3:30 p.m. in the Wal-Mart parking lot at Forest Drive by 2 males asking what kind of perfume I was wearing. I didn't stop to answer them and kept walking toward the store.
At the same time I remembered this email. The men continued to stand between parked cars -- I guess to wait on someone else to hit on. I stopped a lady going toward them, pointed at them, and told her what they might ask and NOT to let them get near her. When that happened, the men and a lady (I don't know where she came from!) started walking the other way toward their car parked in far corner of the parking lot. I thank Jane Shirey for passing this along -- it might have saved me from a robbery. I'm passing this along to you'all so you can warn the women in your life to watch out for this . . .

Now, men asking passing women about the perfume they're wearing isn't at all the same thing as crooks using rigged perfume bottles to knock out their victims. The fact is, there are companies (such as Scentura) that do hire people to sell perfume door-to-door or in parking lots, and some of these salespeople do indeed work in pairs, pitch their wares from cars, and employ aggressive sales tactics (which include approaching women and asking them what kind of perfume they're wearing). But now that this legend is circulating, people dutifully report any sighting of perfume-selling strangers in parking lots as "proof" that this fictional crime wave of ether-bearing robbers is real. It isn't real, no matter how fervently the fear-mongerers want to believe it is.