The Scambag Award: Who is the Worst Person Behind These Tinley Park Cons?

• Who is a worse person? The one who preyed on a 95-year-old woman's love for her grandson or the one who cleaned out a Boy Scout troop's bank account?
• What's more horrible to manipulate: the welcome a "new neighbor" receives or a job seeker's hopes?
• And where does the man who targeted an elderly woman because she was a victim of a previous scam fit in?

It's time for the Scambag Award, where you the readers vote in the comments section to see who you think the worst person is behind these recent Tinley Park scams, cons and thefts.

That's right. Every one of those took place right here in town just since October.

We are not making light of the victims of these crimes, but shedding light on the criminals. Knowing about these scams is the best way not to be a victim of one.

Vote in the comments section on which one of the six choices below is the worst of the worst. If you have information about any of these crimes, call the at 708-444-5300.

But onto the Scambags.

Scambag 1: Neighbor John

Ah, the warm welcome a friendly community like Tinley Park gives its new neighbors and friends. What better target for a horrible person?

, a Hispanic man identifying himself as "John" or "John Lopez" knocks on the front door introduces himself as the new owner of the house adjacent. He then asks the resident to go to the back yard with him so he can show them the work he's planning to do on the house.

Meanwhile, an accomplice enters the house. , a small dog and the homeowner spotted the men. In another, the accomplice got away with $4,000 in cash and $9,700 in jewelry – including the homeowners' wedding and engagement rings.

These kinds of distraction scams don't always involve new neighbors. Sometimes it's a person selling magazines or someone asking for a drink of water. Don't let strangers in your home and, if you leave the front door, lock it behind you.

Scambag 2: The Greek Grandson

$38,000. That's how much .

The trouble was it wasn't her grandson who kept asking for larger and larger amounts wired to different locations around the globe. The woman sent more than $38,000 from various locations in the area until the Orland Hills Walmart notified police of the suspicious transactions.

This is called "the Grandchild Scam," although it has been used with nieces, nephews or other loved ones. The key elements are that a loved one is in danger and needs money sent immediately through an untraceable wire transfer.

If you get such a call, take down the information, get off the phone and immediately call a family member. If the call is from your "grandson," call your grandson. Failing that, call his parents or another family member who might know if this is true.

In this case, the woman's grandson was in Harvey the whole time. Concern made her rush to her grandson's aid, not check the caller's claims.

There's an old lie that con artists only play on people's greed, that "you can't cheat an honest man." A woman's love for her family. That's what this Scambag manipulated.

Scambag 3: The Frequent Flyer

Boy Scout Troop 341 raised more than $1,400 selling popcorn so that they could pay for summer camp, buy the materials to build sleds for their Klondike Derby and help pay for the troops pancake breakfast.

I'm sorry. I meant they raised more than $1,400 selling popcorn .

Through a series of fraudulent debits, some online crook drained the bank account of Troop 341, which includes members from Tinley Park, Oak Forest, Midlothian and Mokena.

There's a happy ending to this. Troop leaders covered the costs out of their own pockets until . Maybe people aren't so bad after all.

Scambag 4: The Fake BestMark

Since peaking at 11.2 percent in January 2010, Illinois' unemployment rate has dropped each month, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security.

Cold comfort for the 588,500 Illinoisians without work in February (the most recent figure) or the 613,400 who were out of work in December. One of those job seekers was with what he thought was Minnesota-based BestMark, Inc.

He received a check for $1,490 on Dec. 4 along with a list of stores at which to spend $150, police said. The man was to keep $300 from the check after evaluating the products he purchased. On Dec. 7, the man wired $950 to "BestMark," police said.

Secret shopper companies don't work like that and the actual BestMark never uses wire transfers or Western Union. (Also, any e-mail from the actual BestMark will end with @bestmark.com). The man found he owed the bank $1,018 for the money he wired to the scammers.

This is called a transfer agent scam. Sometimes it's a secret shopper scam like this, sometimes a Nigerian prince wants you to move money and sometimes you're told you won a foreign lottery you didn't enter. The common factors are someone sends you a check and you're supposed to deposit it and send them part of the money through an untraceable wire transfer.

The check's a fake.

If you get a check, by law that money has to be in your account within five days. But it actually takes a lot longer for one bank to move money to another.

So what banks do is put their own money in that account while waiting for your check to come through. If you deposit a check and wire someone money before your check clears, you're actually wiring them the bank's money.

And by the time the bank realizes the check is counterfeit and the money's never coming, you're on the hook for the money you sent to "BestMark," the Nigerian prince or the Irish lottery.

Scambag 5: The Pigeon Droppings

Proving total scambaggery knows no gender, our next two contestants show the term "the fairer sex" to be a misnomer.

Two women – one in her 60s, the other in her 40s – , saying they had just found a wallet containing $100,000 and no ID. They were willing to split it, but needed $8,000 from the woman for a lawyer to make sure everything was done properly.

This is called a "pigeon drop." Sometimes, as in this case, the Scambags just walk off with your money and sometimes you'll find yourself holding a bag full of paper.

If someone comes up to you saying they found money, call the cops. The police will either be able to find the money's real owner or, more likely, help put a con artist behind bars.

Scambag 6: The Investigator

No clever way to say it: A man targeted the woman from the previous story because she had been defrauded in the previous story.

Flashing a gold-colored badge and claiming to be an investigator working on the "pigeon drop" case above, .

He then told her she would need to withdraw her all her money from the bank so he could "scan" it to determine if it was drug money.

She went to the bank. The man never returned with her money.

The woman said there had been $20,000 in her account before the parking lot scam.

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The victims here are your friends and neighbors. They are people who want to meet a neighbor, get a job, help a relative, split a windfall legally or assist an ongoing investigation. These things made them targets for con artists, scammers and thieves.

Again, if you have information about any of these crimes, call the at 708-444-5300.

Now let's discuss ...