I don’t know why anybody should be surprised.
You’ve got the perfect situation with Witnesses to be taken advantage of by anybody and everybody. These people have let down their personal boundaries. This is a very bad thing because everyone should have boundaries of some sort. I was not raised a JW but came in a young working adult. I saw right away they try to chip away at your boundaries. They think it’s about ‘love’ and brotherly-ness but it’s really about exploitation. They pull this mostly with single women but I suppose a gullible brother can be a victim. They also act like you supposedly can trust everybody there. I am friends with an ex-JW woman who was suspicious back in the day when a certain couple in the hall wanted her to just leave her very young daughter with them for an afternoon! Her instincts told her No and she declined.
You also have a mentality of deadbeatism and people who imagine they can be forgiven for anything.
As I might have said previously: at least when I was in I was basically surrounded by suburban homeowner types. Maybe a con-artist type would appear from time to time in the form of somebody’s ‘friend’ visiting. This person was oh so spiritual and gave long flowery answers, etc. They ended up being invited everywhere but I think people’s delight was short lived when the person started asking for money and crying a river about hard luck, and so on. I think this was common in the Witness religion. But, I still wasn’t threatened by this because they were few and far between.
But, NOW, with all the responsible older people having passed away (and many others left)..a different demographic remains of more ‘needy’ (which can mean a lot of things). FORGET ABOUT IT…. I wouldn’t tolerate anybody making a bee-line over to me asking for money! Like when I was at a memorial in later years and a visiting woman did this.. My ‘NO’ to her was certainly loud enough for people around me to hear.
This is what I (who was knocked for working full-time) would encounter if I were stupid enough to ever get involved with this religion again.. I have explained this to the few JWs I know.. And to any JW lurkers:..nobody wants to be around panhandlers and you’ve got another thought coming if you imagine that responsible-looking person you see at the hall owes you anything!