NEW YORK CITY — An elderly couple in New York City is speaking out after they fought back when they were targeted by con artists for their Rolex watch.
Of all the easy marks in all the world, Larry Schwartz, 87, and his wife Joanna Cuccia are not among them.
“You have an attitude? I’ll give you an attitude. I was raised on the street,” Schwartz said.
The two have been married for decades and are pushing 90. They found themselves the victims of a con when they walked into a local senior center and a stranger approached them from behind.
“‘I’m from Dubai,’ he said, ‘I need directions. Could you give me directions?'” Cuccia recalled. “I said, ‘Welcome to New York. What directions do you need?’ He said, ‘Where could I go to find a Walmart?’ I said, ‘There are no Walmarts in Manhattan.’ He said, ‘Tell my wife, tell my wife.'”
His partner, a woman, was in an SUV at the curb.
“She’s going like this to me, come come, and she kissed my hands … OK what do you want? I thought she wanted directions or something,” Schwartz said.
But she wanted to trade watches – her obvious knockoff Rolex for the real deal on his wrist.
“She thinks she’s got a sucker and she hands me this piece of sh** and I’m looking at it, and that’s when a bell went off, I’m saying, ‘This is a con,’ Schwartz said. ‘At that point, she’s grabbing my hand and she’s pulling it in the window.”
But Schwartz lifts every day. He used to box and even jumped out of planes in the Air Force.
Larry Schwartz is 87 years old and says he lifts every day of his life.
“The only part of her I could get was her right arm, and I gave her what we used to call a three-quarter turn,” Schwartz said. “Her face and head came up against the inside on the top of the car, and she hit that and she fell back, and he’s getting behind the wheel, and the car starts to move. I’m not stupid … I’m not going to get dragged. That’s when I let go, and they’re off.”
He kept the knockoff Rolex and his real one, which was damaged in the scuffle and is getting repaired.
“It’s unfortunate because I love New York, all my life I’ve helped tourists, but I won’t do it again,” Cuccia said. “I’m not as young as I was and I’m not going to take that chance anymore and it’s a shame.”
The New York Police Department is investigating the incident to see if it’s part of a bigger citywide robbery pattern.
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