SR 520 Grifter Pulls Off $15K Jewelry Swap: Police

BELLEVUE, WA - It stinks that this happens, but sometimes criminals target Good Samaritans. A man was recently swindled by a grifter who was supposedly having car trouble along SR 520 in Bellevue.

The incident happened around 3 p.m. on Aug. 13 near the Lake Washington Boulevard overpass west of I-405. The victim noticed a man broken down along an off-ramp. When he approached the car, he saw a woman and a child inside.

The grifter offered the man a trove of jewelry supposedly worth $15,000 in exchange for cash. The grifter would use the money to fix his car, according to police. The jewelry included a "Rolex" and rings, according to Bellevue police.

The grifter asked the victim to follow him to a local bank so the victim could withdraw the cash. At the bank, the victim handed over an undisclosed sum. He didn't discover the jewelry was fake until he took it to an appraiser.

The appraiser told the man the sad news: he had been swindled with costume jewelry.

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