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The painting address numbers on curbs was a widespread scam in San Francisco. Grifters scammed homeowners into doing it.

• antonymoose 3mo ago
  What was the scam exactly? I thought curb numbers were a thing people actually had from the movies!
  • AlotOfReading 3mo ago
    They're definitely a thing. The scam is people showing up and painting them without approval, demanding payment afterwards.
    • antonymoose 3mo ago
      Ah - the closest thing I’ve heard of is the “pine straw” scam. Some landscapers firm pulls up to a cut-de-sac and tells a homeowner they have 20-30 bales of pine straw from a big job and asks if they’d like their beds re-done at a reduced bulk-rate. They then proceed to do the work and bill an exorbitant rate per bale and or inflate the total number of bales, e.g. that 20 bale leftover load is magically now 120 bales.
• deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
• fragmede 3mo ago
  That's extortion, not a scam. Still bad, but different word.