Change game...

Yesterday, while I was coming to office along with my mom who wanted to visit a relative in Bangalore a strange thing happened. I decided to take an auto to my office as I was running late for a telecon which was to happen in the next half an hour's time.My experience with auto drivers in most of the cases has been quite a pleasant one until this happened.
An auto driver stopped near us. He asked if I had 500 rupee note and he would give me 5 hundred rupee notes. I checked and said no. My mom checked in her purse too and had a 500 rupee note. She gave it to him. This is where the whole thing started. He gave one 100 rupee note to my mom. Soon, he asked "Where is the 500 rupee note".
My Half-Confused mom started checking in her purse.... Meanwhile all this confusion was taking time and since there was just 20 min for the telecon I had left to board a Volvo bus. However the bus had started. So again I came back to my mom and got some idea about what was happening. I started defending my mom and said that she did give him the 500 rupee note. I tried taking note of the vehicle number but unfortunately it was in Kannada :( and could not make note of it. The auto driver by then had started his vehicle and had disappeared at high speed into a small unpopulated lane at the side. My mom stood there highly surprised at what had happened. She had hardly been cheated on things in front of her own eyes! And that too 400 hundred bucks in one shot! When my mom discussed this with my house owner in bangalore about this incident they said that such things are very very common here.
People come by and ask for change and even after giving them the proper change they distract you in some fashion and confuse you to believe that you have not given the right amount of change. As for my poor mom.. she did her bit in compensating for the loss by taking a long walk to and fro to her relative's place saving around 50 bucks from the 400 hundred she had lost!