Merbin (second left) shows the seized items to the media at a press conference today.
KUCHING: A foreign crime syndicate was crippled by the Padawan District Police Commercial Crime and Investigations Department (CCID) at a house in Lorong Stampin Tengah with the arrests of two men and three women on Dec 13.
The CCID team, headed by Inspector Fakhri Ismail, acted on a police report lodged by their latest victim managed to track down and arrest the suspects within a span of four hours.
“The police also seized various amounts of currencies and jewellery from the suspects,” said Padawan Distric Police deputy chief DSP Merbin Lisa to a press conference at their headquarters today.
The amount of currencies seized were RM6,618; 1,760,000 Indonesian Rupiah; Hong Kong Dollar 610 ; 1,150 Chinese Yuan and Brunei Dollar 2.
A multipurpose vehicle, two Indonesian passports, three People’s Republic of China passports, five gold rings, three pairs of gold earrings, four gold lockets, three gold necklaces, two gold bracelets and eight units of handphones were also seized from the suspects.
According to the case fact, the victim, a local elderly woman from Siburan, met the con artists on Dec 11 around 9.10am in Siburan town when she was about to finish her grocery shopping.
During the brief encounter, the three con artists conjured up a story by saying that the victim’s family will be facing a string of bad luck, starting with her son’s accident at exactly 12 midnight on Dec 12.
After creating the sense of false urgency to their victim, the con artists further said they could help her to break the bad luck by performing a cleansing ritual which requires payment and offerings.
The ritual was conducted at the victim’s house where she handed a down payment of RM1,000 to the con artists.
In addition, she was also instructed to withdraw money from her fixed deposit account totalling to RM4,091.94.
The victim’s money and jewellery were then packed in a plastic bag for the purported cleansing ritual. The victim were also told to not open the plastic bag for a duration of three days.
Little did the victim realised that the con artists had switched the original plastic bag with a similar plastic bag containing two bottles of mineral water and newspaper cuttings.
The victim claimed that she had lost around RM13,091.94 to the con artists.
Merbin said the case will be investigated under Section 420 of the Penal Code for cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property.
If found guilty, the offender(s) can faced a jail sentence between one to ten years, whipping and fine.