As the holiday season gets underway and the temperatures start to drop, we suddenly realize after ten months of social cognitive dissonance, there are those who are downtrodden and need the help of others to see them through. Organizations, from massive to grass root send out pleas to help the less fortunate, asking for food, clothing, or money to give mercy to those who need it.

And I would hazard to hope that Americans are generally good people who have a short attention span. We know in the back of our minds that hunger and homelessness don’t take the other ten months out of the year off, only starting around the holidays to keep our joy in check. Yet it’s pretty easy to forget the problem when it’s not constantly staring us in the face. Most of us count our blessings with the natural defense of forgetting about the worries of the world when it’s not necessary. A blessed few forget about them all the time. Others have religion.

But in general, we want to help others. When our schools, businesses, and churches start setting out the boxes for canned goods, we scrounge through our cupboards and pick out the things we’d never use or, if we aren’t chronic food-hoarders, rush over to the nearest Aldi and purchase a case of green beans. We volunteer at soup kitchens, located in places we normally wouldn’t be caught dead in. We give money to people who come up to us on the streets with their tales of misery, asking for a small amount of money just to survive.

Wait, hold it.

Although it may seem not only extremely helpful, but convenient to hand someone who appears to be down on their luck a couple of bucks, it’s actually not such a good idea, because you never know who is really in need and who is simply trying to panhandle out of pure greed. I’m sure a lot of you our shaking your heads and saying “Chris, how can you be so unsympathetic and suspicious? Crooks don’t simply walk up to you and ask you for money! Those kinds of people just take it from you!”

Unfortunately, this sort of optimism is unfounded, because panhandling (a term that can apply to the act of asking for money and actually needing it, but for this article, I use it in the context of a person doing it simply for personal gain and not survival) is a real problem. To prove my point, I’ll recall my experiences with the infamous beggar.

The first time I can remember getting asked for money was outside the Spaghetti Warehouse restaurant in downtown Toledo. An older man came up to my girlfriend and me and asked for some money. He even offered to give us some Tarta bus tokens in exchange. This, of course, wasn’t important at all, since we never use the bus, but we wanted to help. He stated that he would probably use the money for cigarettes, which should have made us reconsider, but something about the honesty gave us hope that the guy would do the right thing and use the money we gave him to feed himself.

Just then, a passing patrolman came up to us and informed all three of us that what the man was doing was illegal. Because I was still a wide-eyed suburbanite, I was actually annoyed that the police officer was enforcing some intolerant, unsympathetic law that didn’t take into account a desperate person’s lack of options. It never occurred to me that there was a practical and helpful reason for this sort of law.

The officer sent the man away and we went about our business. Once we left the restaurant, the man approached us again, making sure the police weren’t around. We gave him a few dollars and he gave us the gratuitous tokens, and we were on our way, happy that we helped someone in spite of Johnny Law.

Another such incident happened around the Underground, a club that the PB Army, a band which my co-worker plays lead guitar for, was playing at. I was a little confused about the parking situation, since the only available lot was a pay one, but no one was out to take the money. As I got out of my car to ask someone about it, a passerby informed me that the lot was free at night, so I decided to head in. That’s when he came up to me.

He held his hands in the air and told me that he wasn’t going to hurt me. I should point out that he, like the man in the last story and another beggar I encountered in Toledo, was black, and apparently assumed that I would be threatened by his presence. I wasn’t really, since he had talked to me first, and he seemed harmless, not that this is a good basis for accurately judging an encounter with a stranger. Maybe it was also because there were a lot of people around. But for whatever reason, he felt that he had to inform me that he wasn’t a potential threat.

The man then asked me if I had any money. Since I had been through the motions before, I gave him a couple of bucks. I jokingly asked a couple of co-workers who were also at the club if they were hit up by the homeless guy. I figured my donation into my total expenses that night.

This past spring, my girlfriend and I was outside of Fricker’s when I was approached by a desperate woman who told me she had just been kicked out of her apartment and needed money. I only had some small change on me at the time, to which she moaned and panicked as if someone just told her that her children were being thrown out of the apartment window as we spoke. After my girlfriend and I went inside, I felt really bad for the woman, so I went out to my car and dug up whatever change I could find. I set out down the street looking for the woman, but I couldn’t find her.

I want to point out that I honestly don’t think that I was had with any of these previously mentioned situations. I wasn’t left with the impression after the fact that I was conned, even with the first guy who stated that he would probably use the money for smokes. Overall, I still believe that I had reached the destitute. Maybe it was because there was no way I could verify otherwise.

However, I believe whole-heartily that I fell for a scam last winter. I was in front of Jo Jo’s restaurant, located in west Toledo, outside the downtown area. My girlfriend and I just left the restaurant when a man riding a bike approached us. I’ll point out now that the man was a white guy, which will play out some irony for you racist types out there.

The man claimed that he ran out of gas and (to add to his dilemma) had a child with a broken leg in his car. He said he needed a four dollar deposit for the gas can from a gas station, as well as some money for the gas itself. The kicker was he promised to pay me back twice as the money as I gave him once he and his child were safe and sound. This proposition no doubt worked on many other suckers, and it had me.

I guess karma came around and kicked me in the butt for thinking this to be a money-making scheme, with the added benefit of helping someone who needed it. I forked over ten dollars and my address, and despite the promise to send the money out right away, I still haven’t seen a red cent a year later. You could say I was had.

In retrospect, you have to wonder about his story. First of all, why did he have a bike if he was driving around with his kid? It’s not outside the realm of possibility that someone would just happen to be transporting one while they broke down, it’s also not the most likely situation. Also, even if he was flat broke, couldn’t he ask to use the phone in a business to call someone he knew? And even though not everyone has them, he didn’t happen to have a credit card to charge the gas to, even if it would mean going over the credit limit, something you don’t generally worry about when you’re stuck out on the road with an injured child on a frigid night?

These are the kinds of things you don’t think about when someone comes up to you in their “hour of need.” You want to give people the benefit of a doubt and believe that they aren’t low enough to pretend to be in trouble just to take money from benevolent bystanders. You want to believe that humanity, despite its flaws, wouldn’t stoop to such an offensive pretense to commit a crime. And yet it happens, and we feel like fools for falling for such a ruse. I know I did.

And yet we want to help out people who need it, but we clearly can’t trust just anyone. So how do we protect ourselves from potential scammers? First and foremost, don’t hand out money, at least not any substantial amount. Cash is the most convenient donation you can make, since you carry it on you more often than not, and that’s what crooks are counting on. If you hand out a little to a panhandler, you’re only out a small sum, but the panhandler will be encouraged to keep doing it. It’s up to you whether or not you want to risk leaving a genuine needy person out in the cold.

If you want to give money, do a little research to find reputable organizations in your area. Asking a pastor or employee at your local church isn’t a bad idea either, as they’ll most likely have some hand in helping the poor, or at least know of good organizations. There’s just no telling if any cash you hand over to an individual is going to go to what it’s intended for.

If you want to spend money on an individual in need, go with them if possible and buy whatever it is they claim they need, like food, gas, or medicine. If they refuse the offer, refuse their plea, because something is up. If someone is desperate enough to ask you for money, they should be willing to accept an escort to make sure they stay on the straight and narrow.

In the case of a person who asks for food money, offer them leftovers from a restaurant or some groceries if you happen to be carrying them. If they’re need is real, they won’t snub you. If you want to be prepared to help someone who’s hungry, have a gift card to a fast food restaurant (like McDonalds) handy for the occasion. Sure, a panhandler might try to pawn it off on another victim, but at least they can’t convert it straight to ill-gotten profit.

It’s not as practical, but you can carry around a bag of canned goods in your car, especially during the winter months, when the weather won’t mutate whatever charity you decide to haul around. That way, you can hand off a few cans of food if you run into a beggar while driving along and won’t have to sacrifice any tempting cash.

This may sound odd, but I once ran into a guy holding up a sign claiming he was a veteran and needed food. I just came up with the canned food bag idea not too long before then, so I walked up to the guy with my donation. He was extremely grateful, and I felt good about doing something. If nothing else, you can count on a church, business, or school to have some manner of food drive going.

Don’t think for a second that you can recognize the real needy from the fake. There are panhandlers out there who take their craft to the next level, employing props like baby dolls disguised as real babies to add to the effect. The shysters who will try to work their black magic on you are likely to have honed their skills by the time they get to scamming you. Acting is their job, and don’t expect to be able to tell an acting distressed person from the real thing. The best way to avoid falling for a ploy is to not give into to pleas for cash.

If you come across someone who you suspect is trying to con money out of you, simply refuse to give them anything, even if they insist. If they persist, politely refuse them to a point, and then tell them honestly that you don’t trust them and believe that they’re spinning a tales. If they suspect that you’re onto them, many a panhandler will run away and live to steal another day.

Or spin a tale of your own. Take a suspected panhandler into a nearby gas station or other business under the guise of needing to get money to give them, then discreetly ask and employee if they’ve ever seen them around before, just in case that person has pulled that sort of stunt around the area. Or you can explain your reservations and ask for a form of identification or ask to take their picture with a camera phone. If this doesn’t scare them off, at least you’ll have something to go on should you want to contact the police if you suspect you’ve been had. If you’re positive that you’re being bamboozled (like if they’re carrying a prop baby) or feel threatened, excuse yourself to make a call, saying you’re going to call a friend to bring over some money, and call the police instead. Panhandling in general is illegal in many places, so you would be reporting a crime either way.

Personally, I find this sort of crime to be more appalling than someone who comes up to you and mugs you; at least there’s no pretense there. Not only do the panhandlers lie to you to steal your money, but they steal that money from someone else who you would normally have given it to who might really need it. Also, if you think you’ve been duped, you’re less likely to help the next person that comes along, a person who might just have a real need. I’m very angry towards the person who ripped me off, and I’m certain that if I should ever meet him again, I’d be obligated to extract my loan from him, with a sizable late fee. using a metal pipe.

Shysters like the man I encountered are clearly a problem that is more serious than most would take it as. By leading innocent people on, these criminals are not only taking our money, but also our trust in people in general, a commodity which I think we can’t afford to lose much of these days. So stay smart, keep your wallets in your pockets, and take a stranger’s convincing sob story with a grain of salt, especially around the holidays.

For more information on this scam, as well as some funny stories about panhandling buffoons, check out Snopes.com.