Gullible's Travels

So, yesterday we were minding our own business when we get a rather aggressive knock on the door. It is a girl who says she is selling magazines to earn points to go to college. Seemed rather harmless. It got more and more fishy as the next 20 minutes unfolded. Her story started crashing into itself by the second. Of course, while this was happening I felt that everything wasn't on the up and up, but we still ended up giving her money...I'll get to that.
She said that this is the third "contest" she has done and she knows all the best ways to get people to fork her over some cash. She can earn triple points if you donate the subscription, double points if it's a gift, quadruple points if you are stupid enough to give her any money...So we're looking through the list of magazines and I asked her if you had to pay up front. Of course the answer was yes. I told her to go into my bathroom and look next to the toilet. I told her she would find a stack of magazines that have barely been opened. That was me declining. I should have declined for the both of us but we did want to help her out so Lauren picked Interview Magazine out of sympathy for this "poor" girl.
I asked her where she was from and she said "here." That was the first real thing that struck me. She had a Tennessee Volunteers hoodie on...I asked her if she was wearing that so people would give her more money. She said no. Shocker. To make a long story a little longer, she was actually a nice girl. Cursed every so often but relatively harmless as far as we could tell. So I wrote her a check for $53 even, Lauren fed her a homemade muffin and she was on her way.
I quickly looked up the company she gave me, Atlantic Circulation, Inc. SCAM, SCAM, SCAM!!! EVERYWHERE I LOOKED --- "RIP OFF ALERT," "DOOR TO DOOR SCAM,"JAMES CAPOZZI IS GULLIBLE!" That was really there!
I quickly stopped payment on the check. Moral of the story...do this research while the person is in your home so you don't hand them over a piece of paper with your account number on it!!!!!!!!!! Ugh.