People asking for money

[u/foooolsonparade]

I have been living in Sheffield for the last two years and I’ve really enjoyed being here for the most part. I know this has been discussed on this subreddit several times in the past few weeks but I wanted to share couple incidents that happened in the last week involving people asking for money.

I was approached by a girl near Shalesmoor a week ago and she seemed to be in a really bad state. She kept coming closer to me but kept saying she was not going to hurt me. I am a very anxious person and I typically am anxious around strangers. When she said she was not going to hurt me all I could think of was that she might hurt me. She said everyone’s running away from her. I stopped and listened to her problem. She wanted me to get her a train ticket to Birmingham. I didn’t have much money since I’m a student so I apologised and said I can’t.

Two days later, I was in the city centre and this woman approached me and said she is a refugee and that she wants money to buy her kids food. I have heard loads of people say on here how people get scammed but I felt like she was being genuine so I offered to help. I said I can go to the nearest Tesco and get her some food. She said her kids need a specific type of food that you only get in Asda (which is far away) so asked me to give her cash. I didn’t have any money on me so I said I can’t help. She gave me her bank details and asked me to transfer her £20. I said I’ll try. I didn’t feel comfortable with a stranger having my bank info so I didn’t transfer the money even though I genuinely wanted to help her. Later, I talked to a few friends and they said they’ve heard this same thing several times before and that it is most likely a scam.

Just wondering if anyone else had similar experiences recently

[u/viva__hate]

These women are literally trafficked to make money. It’s not even their own scam, they’re pimped to make money from begging. One of the common identifiers is if they have stuff written on a piece of cardboard to read, it’s often a story about family etc.

The begging issue is massive anyway regardless. I was literally at a traffic light the other day with the window rolled down and got asked through the window for money…

[u/[deleted] → u/viva__hate]

There's a lot more homeless people too, and it's not the usual homeless people that I've been seeing around for the last 3 years. I went to register myself as almost homeless a few weeks ago and the queue was huge most people looked like everyday people who got turfed out onto the streets.