The suspected mastermind of a “pigeon drop” plot that scammed elderly victims out of money for years has been arrested, Fayetteville police said Friday.
Police began tracking Thomas Richardson of Lithonia in 2015 when detectives spotted his vehicle near a location where the scam had just been attempted, police spokesman Mike Whitlow said.
Police followed Richardson, watched as two other suspects in the alleged operation approached a woman and thwarted the alleged scam attempt.
Richardson, 63, left Georgia shortly after the two other suspects in the alleged operation — Marie Mangham, 74, of Atlanta, and Juan Jackson, 57, of Birmingham, Ala. — were arrested in February 2015 on theft by deception charges, Whitlow said.
Following months of being in hiding, Richardson returned to metro Atlanta and was arrested, Whitlow said.
He is being held in the Fayette County jail on four counts of theft by deception.
In a pigeon drop scam, the suspect asks the victim to hand over cash in order to share in profits from a lost bounty of some kind, as was the case when an 87-year-old woman was deceived in Oconee County in 2011.
The suspect in that case offered to split money with an elderly victim, but said she first needed to consult with her boss at a nearby store, Oconee Sheriff Scott Berry told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the time.
The suspect told the elderly victim that her boss had given her the go-ahead to split the money — but only if the elderly woman would first provide the suspect with $6,000 cash.
The elderly woman fell for the scam, Berry said.
—Staff writer Fran Jeffries contributed to this article.
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