Syndicate targeting commuters?
By Benita Aw Yeong
The New Paper
Monday, Jul 23, 2012
She was engrossed in playing with her iPad on her train journey home on Sunday when two men took off with her iPhone, which she thought lay snugly in her bag.
A woman in her mid-30s, who declined to be named, claimed that she was leaning on her side, against closed train doors, when the men probably stuck their hands into her unzipped bag and fished out her phone.
She discovered that her phone was missing only at about 6pm that evening, when she arrived home.
The police confirmed that a report regarding the case has been made.
Investigations are ongoing.
The woman said that two men, whom she estimated to be between 1.65m and 1.7m tall, boarded the train with her at Orchard MRT station at about 5.30pm.
Unzipped
The men, who she said were in their 30s, kept close to her, standing on her right while she leaned against the train doors.
"I realised that at some point on the train ride, I turned to face away from them, while my bag was within their reach," she said.
"Typically, I don't zip my bag up because I take too many things in and and out of it frequently," she explained, adding that she always carried her bag slung over her shoulder, with her arm draped around its opening.
The woman said she suspects the men were foreigners, prompting the question: Are there foreign syndicates targeting train commuters?
When asked about this, train operator SMRT did not respond to the question directly.
Instead, a spokesman said that based on records from 2010 to this year, SMRT had not seen any increase in the number of times it sought police assistance regarding theft on the rail network or aboard buses.
On Saturday, four Chinese nationals were charged in court for allegedly stealing on trains here.
A police statement said that two of them were found loitering suspiciously in the vicinity of Dhoby Ghaut MRT station on Wednesday.
The police also spotted one of them stealing a wallet from an unsuspecting female commuter's handbag before going through the contents with the other suspect.
The officers immediately moved in to arrest them.
Two accomplices were subsequently arrested in Aljunied.
In May, The New Paper reported that a Chinese national, suspected to be part of a larger syndicate from China, was jailed for four weeks for stealing from passengers on a Singapore Airlines flight bound for Hong Kong.
Large crowds inevitably attract pickpockets, said private investigator Davy Chan, who served in the police force for 12 years.
"They usually operate in threes. One person is in charge of distracting, one person will pick and one will dispose of the loot.
"Most of us go about town with very little awareness of our surroundings and having our pocket picked is the last thing on our minds.
"This makes for prime targets," he said.
And that is why the upcoming London Olympics is expected to attract professional gangs from Romania, Lithuania and even South America who operate in capitals across Europe, reported the Daily Mail.
A BBC investigation exposed the tactics used by Romanian thieves, who were previously operating in Barcelona, Spain, to dupe their victims.
The criminals boasted of their "one-second" techniques which leave targets unaware that anything has happened until it is too late.
They can make £4,000 (S$7,900) a week taking wallets, smartphones and laptop bags.
The goods are then shipped back to Romania and sold on the black market.
In Singapore, the first three months of this year saw 223 cases of theft recorded.
The number for total theft cases, which includes pickpocketing, recorded last year was 849, down from 920 in 2010.
Crowded places
Said a police spokesman: "Thieves are opportunistic in nature and commonly target unwary victims in public, especially in crowded places such as shopping malls and on public transport.
"Common methods adopted by thieves are stealing exposed items such as mobile phones and wallets from bags or unzipping or slitting the bags of unsuspecting victims, who are sometimes distracted by the other accomplices."
He urged members of the public to remain vigilant at all times when in public, especially in crowded places.
This article was first published in The New Paper.
