Liam O’Dell: The European ‘beggars’ using deafness as a scam

They approach you with a petition, their hands gesturing that they’re deaf, before pointing to a box for you to sign.

If they haven’t taken money from you in the form of a ‘donation’, then the detailed form is a distraction to do away with other valuable possessions such as your phone.

A growing phenomenon across Europe, the fraudsters not only pose a financial risk to tourists, but a reputational one to a global deaf community.

“It just upsets that me people are using deafness in this way,” says Calum Medlock, a profoundly deaf BSL user from London, “because they’re making our community look bad and tourists may feel more reluctant to donate to legitimate charities.”

It’s early July, and Calum walks the streets of Berlin with his mother. A sightseeing holiday to visit landmarks, it was at the Brandenburg Gate where they were first approached.

“We just looked around and there were typically a performer or two in front of the gate, like a clown making balloons,” he recalls. “Then a woman came up to me and put her sheet up to my face and I noticed it was about helping ‘deaf and disabled childer’ with English misspellings. It also had a paragraph of German text but I didn’t bother to read more after noticing it was about deaf children, which gave me a strange vibe.

“I signed to her to see if she can sign but she just simply walked away. Someone else did the same to my mother and she asked if they’re deaf and they walked away. It was obvious that they’re scamming. I thought they were collecting people’s contact details for sinister purposes.”

Left shaken by the experience, two days later, Calum experienced it again.

“We just left our hotel to walk past Checkpoint Charlie and a different woman came up to me and when I asked again if she can sign, she immediately walked across the street,” he explains. “My mum also bumped into a boy doing the same thing. She introduced me to him saying that I am Deaf and I sign, the boy legged it and my mum shouted him to stop.”

It was at Victory Column that Calum learned about the scammer’s technique.

“Beware of fraudulent fundraisers,” the poster read. “People with these lists do NOT collect for charitable purposes. Passers-by are cheated and distracted by this scam, to quickly steal cash or pickpocket from opened wallets.”

Yet it’s not just in Berlin where this is happening. At 11:51am on 11 July, Erin Ironside posts two pictures of a card showing a BSL alphabet on one side, the other side a message, which reads: “Hello Kind Person! Sorry to trouble you. I have been deaf since childhood. This is a deaf people hand alphabet. Our goal is to earn a living.

“Please buy this alphabet to help us with our goal and to help us communicate. Thank you so much for your kind heart,” it concludes.

Erin’s message in her accompanying caption is clear: “DON’T fall for this,” she writes, saying that she has reported the scam.

Responding to a request for comment, Police Scotland say: “We were made aware of the incident on 11 July and all reports of fraud and any other financial crime should be reported to Police via 101 without delay.

”Reporting incidents assists Police Scotland in tackling fraud and enables us to identify areas of concern and patterns of behaviour. The information you provide is valuable and could lead to the prosecution of offenders and to ensuring the safety of the public.

“We will record all information you provide and appropriate action will be taken.”

I ask Calum why these scammers use the deaf community in particular. “They used [it] because not a lot of hearing people are aware that deaf people exist or even have associations [with them].

“I think they also use emotional appeal, like ‘poor deaf children’, or ‘poor disabled children’,” he adds.

As police continue to monitor the issue, there’s also the question of much more work society needs to do to improve deaf awareness globally.

If there is one issue which shows how much more work countries needs to be done, then it’s the sinister rise in these deaf-based scams.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is a mildly deaf freelance journalist and blogger from Bedfordshire. He wears bilateral hearing aids and can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.