A Hong Kong woman has been arrested for stealing a handbag she found in a taxi, Public Security Police (PSP) spokesman Cheong Heon Fan said during a regular press conference yesterday.
Cheong said that the suspect surnamed Mo is in her fifties.
According to Cheong, the female victim forgot to take her handbag, containing 24,000 patacas in cash, when she got out of a taxi in the afternoon of January 26. After being unable to locate her handbag and suspecting that her handbag had been taken by someone, she reported the case to the police and estimated a loss of 40,000 patacas.
Police officers scrutinised their citywide CCTV surveillance system and identified two female passengers, who they assumed to have taken the handbag later that day from the cab. One of the women was intercepted when she entered Macau through the Barrier Gate checkpoint on Sunday, but she claimed to have no knowledge of the handbag in question.
Later, she contacted her friend, Mo, who was summoned to a police station. Under questioning, Mo admitted to stealing the handbag out of greed. She claimed that the handbag was in her residence in the UK.
Mo has been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP), facing a theft-by-finding charge, Cheong said.
