Man Taken for Nearly $10K in Illegal Gambling Scam in Cartersville

A 77-year-old Kentucky man was scammed out of nearly $10,000 in cash and valuables in what he described as an illegal gambling scam at a Cartersville truck stop.

He was gassing up his motor home about 10:45 a.m. Thursday in the back parking lot of the Pilot Travel Center at 968 Cass White Road when a man approached him waiving a $100 bill and said another man was giving away money because he had just won the lottery, according to the Bartow County Sheriff's Office incident report, above.

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The victim followed the man between two semis parked in front of the gas island, where he saw a second man standing with a box containing two black cards and one red card.

He was told to pick the red card and did so successfully, and after doubling his bet several times, won $400, the victim told police. After the scammers showed a "bunch of $100 bills," the victim agreed to double his bet again and put down $600 and two rings and a watch he had been wearing.

The victim said "all of the sudden" a third man stepped between him and first two men and said he worked at Pilot and they had been having problems with illegal gambling. The two scammers grabbed the victim's money and jewelry, valued collectively at $9,000, and ran, while the third blocked the victim from pursuing them.

"Before he knew it," the third man, who appeared to be wearing some type of uniform, "was gone, and he realized that he had been scammed out of his property," the police report says.

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