This year, Mel magazine decreed, has been the year of the scam. Con artists from Donald Trump to Joanne the Scammer gained national prominence, winning presidential elections and magazine profiles, among other accolades, all through the elusive arts of robbery, fraud, lies, and cheating (light clerical). But it’s not too late for another scammer to show up late and last-minute-swindle her way into the best scammer-of-the-year conversation. On Monday the Huffington Post offered a worthy candidate: the anonymous Florida woman who is selling positive pregnancy tests for $25 a pop, or “two for $35 if the customer is traveling more than 60 miles.” Now that’s what I call a steal.
The woman posted an ad on Craigslist offering up her services, and the professionally sanctioned scammers of Jacksonville’s WJAX-TV, a.k.a. journalists, took notice, setting up a sting with an intern. Way to force your interns into illegal activities, WJAX! Scam goals. The ad, since taken down, read in part:
Very self explanatory I am 3 months and I am providing a product in which the consumer is able to purchase a positive pregnancy tests or urine for your own use. Whether you are using it for your own amusement such as a prank, or to blackmail the ceo of where ever who you are having an affair with I DONT CARE AT ALL this is an absolutely no questions asked type of deal tell me what you need I provide it for monetary exchange. I will not overcharge for the urine test but I will not be low balled either do not contact me if you are going to be cheap and difficult.
This tour de force of a posting gives you a sense of the no doubt Scarlett O’Hara–like presence behind it: God as her witness, she will do what she needs to pay tuition, and don’t you dare B.S. her. In a country where politicians are increasingly determined to take away women’s reproductive rights, who says selling your with-child pee isn’t a radical way of reclaiming them? There’s that phrase, when the going gets tough, the tough get going; well, when the going gets pregnant, the pregnant scammer finds a way to make money off that bun in the oven. But scammers live by their own codes and despite this woman’s will to hustle, she won’t overcharge you. Just the going rate for urine/positive pregnancy tests, as reported by NASDAQ, no higher or lower.
That said, can we fundraise to bring Sheryl Sandberg in to mentor this woman? A consultant could probably help her streamline her operation—she should raise prices to make up for the pregnancy tests alone, not to mention all the juice she must be chugging to keep her bladder full.
HuffPo reports that selling urine is not illegal, but using someone else’s urine to perpetuate fraud could get someone into trouble with the law. So it sounds like our dear scammer in in the clear here, with several months of primo pregnancy time ahead of her to make the sweet cash she will need to live by her wits in Trump’s America. All she has to do is stay hydrated.
