I guess I missed that during the Katrina coverage. Maybe the term is used more in the South? I hadn't run into it here in Michigan before. But I suppose we don't have enough damaging storms to support a thriving "storm con artist" population.
As long as I can remember, when there was storm damage in an area there were warnings to watch out for the 'Travellers'. Also, at anytime there could be warnings that the Travellers were in the area with one scam or another. The modus operandi was usually similar; a couple of guys would show up saying they would fix something for a good price, then do some extremely shoddy work, then cut and run.
One of their favorite scams was to acquire used motor oil and go to homes and farms and tell the homeowner that they had just done a job up the street and had some left over and would seal their pitch roof or driveway for a ridiculously cheap price. They would coat the driveway or roof in the used motor oil, and the homeowner would not discover the scam until they were long gone.
The Travellers are descendants of Irish Roma that have settled in Traveller's Rest, South Carolina and Murphy Village, South Carolina. They appear Southern in every way but among themselves they speak a variation of an old Celtic language they call Shelta. They keep to themselves except when they are working and then they can be rather charming. They rarely finish school, many dropping out after 6th grade. They have arranged marriages, with pubescent females being married to adult men.
You can read more about them in this
Time article or
here or
here.
But these may very well be some of the 'Storm Chasers' that are referred to in the article. Not all of them are con artists, and some of the ones that were have gone legit because it has become harder for them to pull their scams in the modern age, especially since so many people here have known of locals who were scammed before. I would not be surprised if the ones that were still doing cons were traveling out to the Great Plains after storms. In fact, it seems that I read somewhere that there was a relatively new settlement of Travellers somewhere in Texas near Dallas-Fort Worth.
