Gerhard Schröder says a man tricked him out of cash on a parking lot in Witten after asking him to change two euros for a shopping cart. The 69-year-old said he later found banknotes missing from his wallet and put his loss at about 30 to 40 euros.
He said the encounter happened on Wednesday, 22 July, around 15:00 at a food discounter on Dortmunder Straße. Schröder was already sitting in his car when the man opened the passenger-side door, spoke to him in a friendly way and asked for change. Schröder took out his wallet to help, and the man then put many 20-cent coins into it before asking where the nearest post office was. He said he did not suspect anything at once. “Da hätte ich schon stutzig werden können,” Schröder said later.
The case matters because it shows how little force such a scam needs. No threat was used, no argument followed and nothing obvious was taken in the moment. The trick worked through pace and routine: a small request, a wallet opened, coins dropped in, attention shifted. Schröder said he did not notice the missing banknotes until the next day. By then, the scene had already moved on.
After that, he returned to the parking lot in Witten on Thursday and Friday, hoping to see the man again, but he did not find him. He searched the internet and said he found that the method was already known. He informed the police, but he did not file a complaint. “Das lohnt sich nicht,” he said, calling the damage too small to pursue formally. The missed banknotes were worth only about 30 to 40 euros, but Schröder said he wanted to warn and protect others. “Es geht mir darum, andere zu informieren und zu schützen,” he said.
That is where the story ends for now: the man has not been identified, and Schröder has chosen not to push the matter further. What remains is the warning embedded in his account — that a brief, polite exchange in a public parking lot can be enough to empty a wallet before the owner realizes what happened. “Das war schon gut gemacht,” Schröder said, and that may be the clearest description of how the trick worked.
