MANILA – Police announced the arrest in Manila of four women, all Chinese nationals, on the complaint of a Filipino-Chinese businesswoman who claimed the suspects “hypnotized” her into parting with her money and valuables whose total was equivalent to about $4,000.
Police said their arrest came a day after they arrived in Manila and stayed in a hotel in suburban Makati City, Metro Manila.
Police believe the suspects could have swindled or robbed other people by using the same modus operandi as they traveled from China to Malaysia and Indonesia before coming to the Philippines.
As narrated to investigators by the victim, she met the four suspects Sunday morning along one of the major streets in Binondo, the Chinatown district of Manila, and they convinced her to agree to a fortune-telling and “feng shui” session.
The victim said the session was held in one of the fastfood restaurants in Binondo and as they ate, the suspects convinced her into giving them her money and valuables, saying it would help her ward off bad luck.
The victim added she promptly went home only to return in a little while with the $4,000 in cash and jewelry which she turned over to the suspects without any questions asked.
According to the victim, when she regained her composure, the suspects were gone and was left, ironically, to settle their bill at the restaurant.
The victim also said she could have been hypnotized because initially she had no intention of parting with her money and valuables.
But good fortune still smiled on the victim as she put it herself.
Later in the afternoon of that same day, she said one of the suspects contacted her through her mobile phone to ask for more money and jewelry to finally break the “evil spell” on her house.
Without much ado, the victim said she contacted the chief of the Binondo police station, who promptly agreed to conduct an entrapment operation the following day, Monday, at the designated place in Divisoria, a popular shopping area in Manila.
Only one of the suspects showed up in Divisoria, police said, but she led them to her other cohorts at the Makati hotel after her arrest.
“We believe this group has been operating in other countries,” one of the investigators revealed. “They were in the Philippines for only a day and yet they already succeeded in victimizing somebody,”
The investigator also disclosed that earlier, they also received complaints that several Chinese nationals were using hypnosis to rob unsuspecting individuals in Manila’s Chinatown and other areas in the city where Filipino-Chinese run their businesses.
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