THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 11, 1995 TAG: 9501110031
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LAWRENCE MADDRY
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
THANKS TO A quick-thinking, retired school librarian in Charlotte, police there can close the books on a flimflam artist.
Nancy Turner, 64, lives in the Amity Gardens section of Charlotte, a quiet neighborhood of middle-class homes.
``It was about 10 a.m. last Friday when the phone rang,'' she said. ``I had been sitting in my housecoat reading a Danielle Steel novel.''
The phone call was from a man with a deep voice, claiming to be a police officer. He told her there was an an embezzler at a bank, and her help was needed to catch the criminal.
``I was sure I was being flimflammed,'' she said. ``He wanted me to take out about $2,000 from my savings so they could get the embezzler's fingerprints on an envelope for money.''
The former librarian said she had recently seen a local television program about flimflam artists. ``It made me angry that anyone would think I was so stupid,'' she said.
Nancy's husband, Jack, was visiting her sister and mother in Lancaster, S.C., so she was alone in the house. She stalled the man by telling him she had to get dressed, take an insulin shot and eat breakfast.
``I asked if I couldn't phone him back, and he said he'd just wait on the line. . . . That's when I knew it was a flimflam,'' she recalled.
Nancy ran out the door to the house of her next door neighbor, Susan Derby.
``I told her I was being flimflammed and to call 911,'' she said. Then she ran back to her house and got dressed before picking up the phone.
Nancy said it took a policeman only three or four minutes to reach her house.
``He asked if I'd cooperate with the police,'' she said. ``I told him I would because it was a lot better than cooperating with that silly fool on the phone.''
With the officer listening, she picked up the phone again and agreed to withdraw $2,000 from the branch of First Union where she banks. After hanging up, she called her sister's house and told her sister to have her husband come home right away.
When she arrived at the bank, Nancy pretended to withdraw the money and received - as suggested by police - an empty envelope. ``I began to get a little frightened, but the bank manager told me I was being protected by policemen in plain clothes,'' she said.
When she returned home, she heard her small dog, Mitzi, barking in the back yard. ``Mitzi was going crazy because there was a plain clothes policeman back there who showed me his credentials and asked if he could come inside because Mitzi was about to `eat me up.' '' she reported.
A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was the man with the deep voice who wanted to know how things had gone at the bank. When she told him she had the money, he said he was coming to her house.
The man knocked at her door about five minutes later, she said.
``He had a badge in his hand as he entered,'' Nancy said. He was dressed sort of like Columbo on television. Brown suit, shirt and tie, and a trench coat even though it wasn't raining and not very cold, either.''
``Where are the police?'' the man asked, looking around.
``There are no police,'' she said, looking him straight in the eye.
He asked the question again.
At that moment the officer who had been barked at by the dog, stepped out of the kitchen and told the man he had guessed right and was under arrest.
``Then the door flew open and four uniformed policeman marched in,'' she recalled. ``It was very exciting.''
Nancy's husband arrived shortly after the arrest. Police say the flimflam artist is Arthur Lee Oneal, 58, who has a record of fraud convictions in several states including Florida and Michigan.
``I wish you could have seen my husband's face when he drove up and saw all those police cars in the yard,'' Nancy said. by CNB