They were incredibly persuasive, victims said.
The scammers who hit the Portland area on April 3, 2007 said they were UO cheerleaders and students when they asked for money to fund the UO baseball team–and they persuaded some people to give over $100.
Police ended up arresting four people–two men and two women on April 3. The women’s faces appeared on the front page of the Emerald.
The two girls masquerading as cheerleaders were Tasha Mitchell and Amanda Wheatley, and this wasn’t their first or last time getting arrested for the same crime. Local newspapers and message boards reveal that one or both women were cited or picked up on various occasions: in September 2006 in Woodlands, Texas; the next March in San Jose, California; and then after they were released in Oregon, Mitchell was again arrested that November in Virginia.
The two men were Jeremiah Conner and Thomas Ray Kintigh, and the people they scammed in Oregon said they got them right in the heart.
“They get you on the emotional level by reporting to be local, by being from the neighborhood,” said Ken Jensen, a West Hills resident quoted in the original article. “Then they make the charity connection, which tugs on your heart strings. You think you’re doing a good deed for the University of Oregon.”
One of the men with Mitchell and Wheatley knocked on Jensen’s door pretending to be a young man from the neighborhood–actually the son of a pediatrician who lived in the neighborhood. But when Jensen’s wife didn’t recognize the young man’s fake name after he left, they canceled the check.
The scammers could get lots of money through seeming like charming, wholesome people, according to another West Hills resident named Rich Williams. Williams signed a $120 check for the scammer.
“Part of his persuasiveness is that he was a smooth talker,” Williams said. “He seemed to be a college-aged guy who wasn’t used to going door-to-door and didn’t particularly like to do it.”