‘Your son will die’… Finding out the true nature of the fraudulent methods of street ‘blessing scammers’

Photo caption: Victim’s daughter Thuyet Van Huynh (left) is tracking down ‘blessing scammers’Article related information

• Reporters, Elaine Chong & Ed Main
• Reporter, BBC Trending

• 8 hours ago

The Chinese community is being targeted by scammers who approach older women and steal their valuables by tricking them into thinking their loved ones are in danger.

As similar incidents occur one after another in the UK, US, Australia, and Canada, local police are investigating and the victims’ families are also trying to find the culprits.

‘Blessing Fraud’ can be said to be a well-organized street crime play. The gang, usually made up of three women, composes a script written in Cantonese and rehearses it thoroughly. There is only one audience in this play, a victim who does not suspect those who approach him.

Mengni is a Chinese-Malaysian woman in her 60s currently living in London, England. She was walking down Harrow Street in West London to take a yoga class when she saw a woman crying.

The woman approached Meng Ni and spoke to him in Cantonese. She said her husband was sick and asked if I knew a specific healer who was active in the area.

Photo caption: Mengni believes she was deceived by scammers because she believes in spiritual things.

But suddenly, another Cantonese-speaking stranger appeared and said he knew the healer and offered to take Meng Ni and the woman.

Mengni was overcome by the desire to help this grieving woman. As the women and I were walking down an increasingly quiet alley, another woman appeared and said she knew about this healer and was going to see if she could get help as well.

The group talked with him for 15 minutes and then returned. And Mengni heard shocking news. The healer used his miraculous abilities to predict that something big would soon happen to Mengni.

Surprisingly, he knew about all the problems Mengni had experienced during her marriage, the shooting pain she felt in her right leg, and other things she had never told these women.

But there was another part that shocked Mengni.

“Your son will die in an accident within the next three days.”

The woman who came with her asked the healer if he could give her a blessing to protect Mengni’s son.

The healer said, “You should put a handful of rice and as much gold and cash as possible in the bag,” and said he would bless the valuables.

Mengni was relieved to hear that she could get these valuables back after receiving the blessing.

First, one of the women hurriedly sent Mengni home to get the jewelry. Afterwards, he went to the bank and withdrew 4,000 pounds (about 7.1 million won) in cash. All the valuables I had collected were put into one plastic bag.

I think Mengni probably switched bags at this time.

“It happened in the blink of an eye. That woman’s hands were really fast. “I didn’t see anything.”

Mengni returned home and looked inside the black bag. Shockingly, instead of the valuables he had put in the bag, there was only a brick, a piece of cake, and two bottles of water.

Mengni said, “I came to my senses at that moment… And I said to my son, ‘I feel like I was scammed. “I said, ‘I got hit,’” he recalled.

Among the items stolen were heirlooms passed down from generation to generation through Mengni’s mother.

image copyrightNew South Wales Police

Photo caption: Police in the United States, Canada, and Australia have all issued warnings, saying they have been victims of blessing fraud over the past year.

Mengni’s experience like this is a typical blessing scam.

The BBC spoke to several victims who said similar things happened to them. There were similar stories of meeting a despondent stranger on the street and having an evil spirit tormenting a family member or relative. Even the healer’s name was the same, ‘Mr. Coe’.

All victims complained that it took less than a few hours for them to be scammed. It only took 3 hours for him to meet a crying woman and get scammed.

Anqi Shen, a former Chinese police officer who is now a law professor at Northumbria University in the UK, said these blessing scams are the latest version of centuries-old traditional street crimes that exploit people’s spiritual beliefs.

Professor Shen explained, “Chinese people tend to own jewelry that they believe can protect people, such as gold, silver, and jade.”

He added that the victims believed that if these valuables were blessed, their protective power would be greater.

image copyrightTuyet van Huynh

Photo caption, SNS campaign to help victims of blessing fraud come forward

Meanwhile, Thuyt van Huynh launched a social media campaign to raise awareness of such blessing scams after her mother was scammed of tens of thousands of pounds worth of valuables in May.

Huin’s mother was shopping in the Upton area of ​​East London when she was told by three women in the same role that her son was being haunted by an evil spirit.

Meanwhile, police in the United States, Canada, and Australia have all issued warnings, saying that they have reported being victims of blessing fraud over the past year.

Huin’s mother, who lives in the UK, and Mengni both reported the incident to the London Metropolitan Police. Local police said they were investigating a number of incidents reported in the Islington area of ​​London.

Huynh also heard of similar incidents in Lewisham, Romford, Liverpool and Manchester.

Huin collected CCTV footage of the area where the scammers approached his mother and began investigating what happened. According to Huin, the mother in the video “followed all the (women’s) instructions as if she had become a zombie.”

image copyrightTuyet van Huynh

Photo captionThuyet van Huynh showed BBC reporters CCTV footage of her mother as she was approached by scammers

Huin’s mother was not a superstitious or spiritual person, so she had a hard time explaining how she had become so captivated by the healer’s story.

This made Huin wonder if there might be another factor. As a result, I began to suspect that someone had used drugs on my mother. It is said that the criminals may have used drugs to manipulate the mother into coming to her senses just enough to take away the valuables she had hidden at home.

And it led to the hypothesis that “there is a possibility that a drug called ‘Devil’s Breath’ was used.”

Scopolamine, well known by the nickname ‘Devil’s Breath’, is originally a motion sickness prevention drug, but when taken in certain doses, it can make people easily respond to instructions from others to the point where their free will is temporarily impaired.

And it can be administered on the street without the victim knowing.

Of course, there is no evidence that Huin used these drugs to commit fraud targeting his mother or other victims.

Scopolamine is one of the few drugs that can have such psychological effects. It has been used in robberies in Ecuador, France and Vietnam, and in Colombia it has been used in murders and rapes.

Photo captionScopolamine, also known as ‘devil’s breath’, is extracted from flowers that grow in Colombia

It is unknown whether scopolamine is related to the blessing fraud case that occurred in the UK, but even if it is, it seems difficult to prove. Because it is absorbed into the body very quickly, Huin had his mother take a drug test the day after the crime, but it was already too late.

Meanwhile, Lisa Mills, a fraud expert at the charity ‘Victim Support’, suggested another reason why this type of fraud could be so effective. He explained that the method itself was designed to quickly deceive the victims.

Mills, who said, “People who look like me are approaching me,” added, “They are all women, are of similar age, and don’t they speak the same native language as the victim?”

Photo caption: A sign warning of a blessing scam appearing at a Chinese community center in the UK.

The fraudsters are still at large, but the victims’ families are determined to track them down themselves.

Mengni said, “I told the police that I would do anything to catch them.”

He said he was especially upset because the scammers were Chinese.

“Because they are deceiving their fellow countrymen.”

Additional reporting: Austin Landis (Colombia)