What’s This Generation Coming To?

Heartless scam artists responsible for bilking Staten Islanders out of hundreds of dollars turn out to be 12 and 14:

The search for two scam artists who traded on tall tales about dead relatives and needy families came to an end in West Brighton last night.

Not with a whimper, or a high-speed police chase.
But with the young suspects knocking on a door.

A cop’s door.

A brother-and-sister team from the neighborhood — the boy just 12 and the girl 14 — were arrested on charges they have been duping Staten Islanders for months, police said.

The middle-school miscreants were roving Davis Avenue in West Brighton at about 5:40 p.m. when they unwittingly arrived at the cop’s home, according to a police source familiar with the case.

Sensing something was amiss, the cop’s wife called her husband, and officers from the North Shore’s 120th Precinct were immediately dispatched, the source added.

The kiddie culprits were caught a few houses away, with a professional-looking ledger stuffed of falsified donation receipts from two funeral homes for about $150, the source continued.

The duo reportedly confessed to concocting various tall tales, saying that money was tight at home and they were trying to help out their mom.

However, when their mother was notified of her children’s capers, she was shocked, the source said.

. . .

Apparently, the small scam artists coaxed their victims out of cash with the promise that the funeral homes — and even the Advance — would match any donation made toward a burial.

The suspects told cops their inspiration for the sick swindle was the Advance’s coverage of the decomposed body of an infant found Sept. 24 inside a plastic shopping bag in the grass of Luis R. Lopez Playground in Clifton, according to the source.