Con artists take HK$3,000 from elderly woman after claiming she found their money
Two men took cash from victim’s bag while searching it to ‘prove her innocence’
An elderly woman lost HK$3,000 in a street scam on Friday morning when two con artists accused her of picking up a bundle of their cash and demanded to search her bag.
Ng Kit-ching, 79, was approached by the scammers after she withdrew HK$3,000 from the Bank of China branch at Sha Kok Estate, leaving shortly before 10am. She placed the banknotes in a bank book inside her recycling bag.
A man came up to her claiming he had dropped a bundle of money on the street and accused her of picking up the cash, according to police.
Another man posing as a witness then said he saw Ng put the bundle into her recycling bag.
“They demanded to search my bag. I let them check,” Ng told local media. “I did not pick up the money. I was not afraid of them searching my bag.”
Minutes after the two men left, Ng checked her belongings and found the HK$3,000 missing.
According to the widow, the two scammers were middle-aged Cantonese-speaking men.
A police source said this was common street scam, adding that the two men had taken Ng’s money while looking in her bag.
Officers mounted a search, but no arrests were made. Investigators from Sha Tin police district are working on the case.
In a separate incident on Wednesday morning, a 72-year-old man was targeted by a snatch thief after he withdrew HK$69,000 from a bank in Kwai Chung. A 43-year-old man grabbed the cash and tried to escape. Two passers-by and a police officer managed to subdue the suspect after a brief chase.
