Jerry Snipes is in his early sixties and looks like everybody’s grandfather. The hair on his head is pure white. He looks like he might be a preacher—but a preacher he’s not.

Jerry works mostly in southern states. His primary weapon is his mouth. Here’s what I mean. He walks into a Subway shop and orders a sub and a drink. He reaches out with a $20 in his hand, but never really turns the money over to the clerk. Then he says he needs change for the parking meters. "Can you give me two tens and a five for my $20?"

The rhetoric escalates and is far too complicated for me to explain. Suffice it to say that Jerry walks away with his sub-sandwich plus $20 to $40 more than he had when he came in. The clerk thinks he’s been bamboozled, but hasn’t quite figured out how.

These days, Jerry has a new thing. He uses wedding cards as a tool to steal money from retail clerks. How does he do it? I have no idea, but I can give you a rough outline.

Jerry approaches a clerk, usually at night when they aren’t busy. He’s got two or three wedding cards from the store’s card rack in his hands. Jerry has already stuffed $5 or $10 into each card as a gift for the bride and groom.

Jerry tells the clerk he wants to "give the kids a nice send-off and $5 or $10 isn’t enough." He says he wants to put in more money and asks the clerk to put $20 or $50 in each card "which I’ll pay for."

There’s a lot of switching around of money and cards. I have no idea of the exact routine, but each of the cards ends up with $20 to $100 in them—or so it would seem.

Faking frustration, Jerry hands the cards back to the clerk and says, "Hold these for a minute while I go out to my car and get some more cash." Jerry leaves, but he doesn’t come back.

Eventually, the store clerk opens the cards and guess what? Each card contains strips of newspaper cutup in the size of money.

What can you do? If a guy asks you to help him put cash in a wedding card, tell him the store just closed.