Aluminium foil used to fool scanners

Three men from Mongolia used two homemade aluminium foil-lined bags to prevent scanners from detecting security tags on goods they stole from three shops in the IFC shopping mall in Central yesterday.

The men, aged between 44 and 50, were tailed by police after they were seen acting suspiciously at the corner of Nathan Road and Peking Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, at 1.30pm.

'They were spotted peeping into a number of shops and looking at bags carried by passers-by in the area looking for theft opportunities,' Sergeant Lam Chong-lung, of the Tsim Sha Tsui anti-opportunistic theft team, said. 'They walked separately and stayed alert,' to see if they were being followed.

The men were followed by eight plain-clothes officers from Tsim Sha Tsui to Central. The suspects entered the IFC shopping centre in Finance Street, then separated and visited the City'super, Zara and Lane Crawford shops, where they allegedly stole a jacket, two pairs of trousers, three knives and two bottle openers.

Police said the stolen property was worth about HK$11,000.

They were arrested when they met outside a boutique in the shopping centre at about 3pm.