Reporter Jennifer McLain dug through the clip file and discovered Gypsies have been preying on unsuspecting residents of the San Gabriel Valley for a real long time.
Burglary rings, psychic reading, lottery scams and insurance frauds are among a sampling of crimes that Gypsies have committed throughout the area since 1965.
Gypsies, or Roma, are an ethnic group that originated in South Asia about 1000 B.C. and migrated through the Middle East and Europe.
Today, when police refer to Gypsies they are talking about a mixture of these ethnic Gypsies, as well as those who have adopted the lifestyle, which many associate with crime and superstition.
“It’s a subculture of people, and of course you can’t say all Gypsies are bad,” said Jon Grow, executive director of the National Association of Bunco Investigators. “But the problem is that their laws and things they do for work – fortune telling, insurance fraud, welfare fraud, home repair scams