A local woman has been arrested for stealing a cardboard box containing 90 smartphones worth 180,000 patacas she found on the street, Public Security Police (PSP) spokeswoman Cheong Im Sim said in a regular press conference yesterday.
The 62-year-old suspect surnamed Lam told the police that she’s jobless.
According to Cheong, a male resident reported to the police on Saturday that while pushing a cart filled with cardboard boxes, one of the boxes fell off and went missing. He told the police that the box contained 90 phones worth a total of 180,000 patacas.
Subsequently, PSP officers reviewed CCTV footage and saw that Lam initially placed the box aside, later returning with a trolley to take the box to the Iao Han district.
The police arrested Lam in her flat in Iao Han district, where they found the box containing all the phones inside her flat.
Under questioning, the suspect told the police that after taking the box home, she opened it, saw the phones, and “was unsure what to do with them.” She refuted the theft-by-finding accusation.
Additionally, Cheong also announced another theft-by-finding case where a 49-year-old Filipina maid, surnamed Quines, was arrested on Saturday for stealing a phone she found on the street.
The two suspects have been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP), facing theft-by-finding charges, according to Cheong.
This undated photo provided by the Public Security Police (PSP) yesterday shows a PSP officer escorting the local female theft-by-finding suspect to a police station in the northern district.
