Manhattan Event Planners Out Smart Family Friendly Con Artist

New to the event planning industry at Penta Dynamic Solutions, naturally, I was thrilled when my boss asked me to plan my first event. Unfortunately, the party was cancelled last minute but this story is just as exciting as the event would have been.

Please let me introduce Rubin Roberts. He began as a client open to any recommendations from Penta and quickly became a family friendly con artist, wanting to pay for a small budget family reunion with faulty credit cards picture I.D.

Due to poorly written emails with several grammatical mistakes, only two weeks notice and a request to hire a Dee Jay from across the country, I began planning the event with a watchful eye. When I asked Roberts to call to go over any event details, he insisted we communicate via email since he is hearing impaired.

After all planning had taken place, Roberts requested to pay his upfront fee of $10,000 with five different credit cards. Still wary of the situation, my boss advised me to ask for copies of the front and back of each credit card, photo identification and a signed contract. Once the contract was received, the signature neither matched the photo identification nor the credit cards. Instead, each card had a printed signature from, what seemed to be, taken from a cursive font on Microsoft Word. The commercial photo identification license, to my surprise, was a beautiful blonde woman. After phone calls to both MasterCard and the Division of Motor Vehicles, we confirmed that all of the cards were fabricated. There was not much else I could do, but cancel the event.

I am afraid to ask but, do people really think they can get away with things like this? The most mind boggling part of the whole story was when we told Roberts we would not be able to move forward with assisting with his event. He had the audacity to ask “what do you mean by them not being valid?”

Rubin…Really!?!

Casually, our response was “According to the DMV, your driver’s license does not exist and according to MasterCard, your credit cards do not exist. Given this information we will not be moving forward with your event.” If that isn’t clear, I don’t know what is.

I wanted to Blog about this event, not to whine and complain, but to warn all venues, restaurants and event planning companies of Rubin Roberts and if nothing else, provide a laugh to any of our readers.

Emily

In this case, it's obvious at first glance but it may not always be. Here is where Rubin Roberts went wrong.

1. Date of Birth should be MM-DD-YY

2. Name should be Last Name, First Name

3. Address must exist If you google Rubin's address, it does not exist in New York State.

4. Eye color in picture should match description.

5. Signature should be your own and not cursive font from Microsoft Word.

6. Photo should have a grey background.

7. The I.D. Number should exist.

8. Signed contract and credit card authorization form should match signature of government issed I.D.