BBC
Tuyet van Huynh (left) campaigns to track down scammers
Chinese communities are being targeted by scammers who trick elderly women into confiscating their valuables by convincing them their loved ones are in danger.
After a spate of cases on the streets of the UK, US, Australia and Canada, police are investigating and victims' families are trying to track down the perpetrators.
The blessing scam is an elaborate piece of criminal street theater. A group of usually three women performs a well-rehearsed script in Cantonese in front of an audience of just one person – the unsuspecting victim.
Mungnee is a Chinese-Malaysian Londoner in her sixties. She was approached on Harrow Road, west London, on her way to yoga, by a woman in tears. The woman asked in Cantonese if Mungnee knew of a specific traditional Chinese healer in the area, as her husband was ill.
Mungnee feels she was attracted to the scammers because she has spiritual beliefs.
Soon, a second unknown woman speaking Cantonese appeared, claiming she knew the healer and offering to take them to him. Mungnee was carried away, wanting to help the woman who was so upset. On a quieter street, a third woman joined the group, claiming to be related to the healer, and went to see if he could help her.
When she returned after talking to the healer for 15 minutes, she had some disturbing news. Through his mystical powers, he had apparently discovered that Mungnee was also in danger. Miraculously, he seemed to know all about her marriage problems, the shooting pain in her right leg – things Mungnee hadn't shared with them.
But the next revelation shocked Mungnee.
“Your son is going to have an accident in the next three days and he is going to die.”
The woman told Mungnee that the healer could grant her a blessing that would protect her adult son.
The ladies told him, “You must take a handful of rice and put as much gold and cash as possible into a bag.” They would say a blessing over valuable items.
Mungnee says she felt reassured by the promise that her items would be returned to her after the blessing.
One of the women rushed to Mungnee's house to collect her jewelry and then to the bank to withdraw £4,000 in cash from her savings. The valuables were placed in a plastic bag.
Mungnee thinks this must have been the moment the bags were exchanged.
“It was lightning fast – his hands are so nimble. I didn't see anything.
When she returned home, Mungnee was shocked to look inside the black bag and find only a brick, a piece of cake and two bottles of water. She said: “That’s when I felt cold…and then I told my son. “I think I was cheated. I was scammed.'
Some of the stolen items had been in the family for generations, passed down from his mother.
New South Wales Police
Police in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom have issued warnings about blessing scams over the past year.
Mungnee's experience is a classic example of a blessing scam. The BBC spoke to several victims who all tell similar stories – from the distraught stranger to claims that evil spirits are threatening a loved one. Even the name of the fictional healer is the same in many cases: “Mr. Koh”.
All victims are scammed within a few hours. In Mungnee's case, the scam only lasted about three hours from start to finish.
Anqi Shen is a professor of law at Northumbria University and a former Chinese police officer. She believes the blessing scam is the latest example of a centuries-old tradition of street crime that exploits spiritual beliefs.
“The Chinese tend to keep certain valuable jewelry, including gold, silver and jade pieces, believed to hold protective powers,” explains Shen.
She says it is credible to victims that once these items are blessed, they can offer even greater protection.
Tuyet van Huynh
A social media campaign has encouraged other victims of blessing scams to come forward.
Tuyet van Huynh launched a social media campaign to raise awareness of the blessing scam, after her mother was scammed out of tens of thousands of pounds in May.
His mother was shopping in Upton, east London, when three women playing the same roles convinced her that her son was being threatened by evil spirits.
Police in the United States, Canada and Australia have issued warnings about blessing scams over the past year.
In the UK, Mungnee and Tuyet's mother both reported their cases to the Metropolitan Police, who also revealed they were investigating a number of cases in the Islington area of London.
Tuyet has received reports of other incidents in Lewisham, Romford, Liverpool and Manchester.
She began investigating what had happened by gathering CCTV footage from the area where her mother had been approached. Tuyet said the footage showed her mother “following all instructions to the point where she looked like a zombie.”
Tuyet van Huynh
Tuyet showed the BBC the CCTV footage she found, showing her mother with the crooks.
Tuyet's mother cannot explain how the scammers lured her with the story of the healer, because she is categorically neither superstitious nor spiritual.
Tuyet wondered if something else might have been involved. She began researching whether there was a drug that could have put her mother under someone's influence, but also made her lucid enough to retrieve her valuables from hiding places around her house.
She has a theory: “It's possible it's a medicine called Devil's Breath.” »
Scopolamine, colloquially known as Devil's Breath, is used to treat motion sickness. At the right dose, it can make people very suggestible, temporarily compromising their free will. It can be administered to victims on the street, without them realizing they have been drugged.
Tuyet has no evidence that this drug was used in his mother's case or in any other case. It is one of the few drugs capable of having such a lucid effect, and it has been used in robberies in Ecuador, France and Vietnam, as well as murders and sexual assaults in Colombia.
Devil's Breath is derived from a flower that grows in Colombia
Although it is not known whether this drug is involved in blessing scams in the UK, even if it were it would be difficult to establish.
The medicine passes through the body very quickly, so when Tuyet tried to get her mother tested for the medicine the next day, it was already too late.
Lisa Mills, a fraud expert at the charity Victim Support, says there may be other reasons why the scam is so effective, and that the setup is designed to lure in victims quickly.
“You meet people who reflect you, because you know they are like you. They are women, of the same age, who speak your language,” she explains.
Blessing scam warnings circulating at Chinese community centers in UK
For now, the crooks are still at large, but the families of some victims are determined to find them.
Mungnee says: “I told the police that I am ready to do anything to arrest these people.”
What also bothers her is that the scammers are Chinese: “They are defrauding their own people.”
Additional reporting by Austin Landis in Columbia.
