WAVE Fake beggar Gary Thompson pretends to be wheelchair bound, mentally handicapped and claims to make $100,000 a year panhandling. Beggars can’t be choosers — unless they’re really good at their game.
Kentucky’s bogus beggar is back on the streets after promising to stop scamming Good Samaritans with his sob stories and fake disabilities — a job that he claims puts $100,000 in his pocket every year.
A WAVE 3 reporter caught Gary Thompson at his old tricks in Louisville on Wednesday.
“M, m, money,” Thompson said in a slurred voice before changing back to his normal voice a split second later.
“I gotta go y’all, gotta make some money,” he said with a smile.
Cops say Thompson hoodwinks sympathetic strangers by pretending to be confined to a wheelchair and deliberately slurring his speech so it seems like he has a mental disability. Using his degree in speech pathology to perfect his voice, he’s reportedly hit towns in Ohio, Kentucky and Texas. He’s been arrested at least nine times in Kentucky, according to Lex18.
From his jail cell, he promised to stop clowning around.
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“I won’t do it anymore. I’m definitely done panhandling. Definitely,” he told WBKO.
But he hasn’t stopped playing the game. Thompson’s called his act an “addiction.”
In downtown Louisville, he was caught panhandling in front of McDonald’s and a gas station convenience store. He changed his clothes often to fit into the scenario. WAVE spotted him with a group of men, buying and selling small white pills.
The man wheeled over to a reporter with a hidden camera.
“Please help, fell out of my wheelchair today, all my coins, somebody take it,” Thompson said. “Need bus fare get back home.”
When the reporter asked him what had happened, Thompson replied, “Hit by truck 9-year-old, but I no hurt that bad, left side,” he said.
It was a small glimpse of the truth. The Austin, Texas native lost his mobility after getting into a car crash. He got $2.5 million from a settlement with Honda, but ended up blowing all of that money.
The man was spooked when the reporter pulled out a camera and began recording.
“Not doing no deal,” Thompson said. “Put me off camera don’t want to be on camera. I don’t do nothing wrong.”
“I not faking nothing,” he said, giving the reporter a wink after the camera was turned off.
