Beggars can do quite well for themselves. With his scenario, he gets your bike for nothing then flips it for a tidy little profit on campus.

Still a bit more creative than the guy who wandered past me in a country town in Victoria earlier this week asking if I had any change. My swift and brief reply while looking him in the eye was: "No".

It's a numbers game. Do the street 10 or 20 times a day, ask a few hundred people and there are enough who will hand over some of their cash. I can imagine the same with the bike guy -- try the scam enough times a week, and he would have a pretty decent income.