Originally Posted by The_Jazz

In the early 90's in north and northwest suburban Atlanta, there used to be what my friends and I referred to as "The Speaker Scam". There was a group of guys that would drive around in vans with audio equipment. They would tell you that they were installation technicians who had been out on a job where the buyer decided not to have the equipment installed and that their boss told them to get rid of the equipment and split the proceeds with him.

Turns out that the equipment was legit and that it wasn't stolen (even though the above scenario would have been theft). A friend of a friend revealed that he worked with these guys for a couple weeks and that the equipment was all damaged by water in a fire and had been sold by a big-box retailer to some group. The electronics would short out, there were big stains on the wood, etc. It was a gigantic scam since the van guys apparently had several hundred units to sell at $500 apiece, all cash.