The Judiciary Police (PJ), in conjunction with their mainland counterparts, have busted two cross-border gangs which snitched gold chains from elderly men right after luring them into residential buildings’ stairwells or subdivided flats under the guise of providing massage services for between 100 and 200 patacas each, PJ spokesman Chan Wun Man said during a special press conference on Friday.
According to Chan, a total of 14 mainland suspects, aged between 34 and 54, have recently been arrested separately in Shenzhen and Zhuhai – among them five men and four women who were arrested for their alleged involvement in a number of robberies, while two men and three women were arrested for their alleged involvement in a number of thefts.
Chan said that the Judiciary Police received separate reports on April 8 and April 11 from two local men in their sixties that gold chains worth over 20,000 patacas and 30,000 patacas had been robbed and stolen from them in the city centre and the northern district respectively.
Responding to the two reports, PJ officers, through the police forces’ citywide CCTV camera system, discovered that the suspected members of the two gangs were working in teams of one male and one female to target elderly men wearing gold chains in the city centre and the northern district respectively, Chan said, adding that the two gangs each got in touch with at least a dozen elderly men, during which the male members acted as lookouts while the female members were stealing or robbing the gold chains from their targets.
While one of the gold chains was stolen from the victim when he was having a shower in a subdivided flat, the other victim was robbed when he was in a stairwell.
Unlike theft, robbery involves the use of violence.
Chan noted that the suspects immediately fled to the mainland after each successful crime.
According to intelligence provided by the Judiciary Police, the Zhuhai Public Security Bureau (PSB) arrested all 14 suspected members of the two gangs in Shenzhen and Zhuhai in the evenings of April 8 and April 11, according to Chan, who pointed out that the 14 suspects are from the same province in the mainland, with most of them having criminal records for theft and extortion.
Chan did not reveal the province the suspects are from.
Chan said that at the time of the press conference there was no indication yet that the two gangs were linked. Chan also said that there were possibly more victims whose gold chains were stolen or robbed by the two gangs.
This undated pixilated handout photo provided by the Judiciary Police (PJ) during Friday’s special press conference shows 13 of the 14 suspected members of two theft and robbery gangs being arrested at a flat in the mainland by the Public Security Bureau (PSB) in April.
