‘Your son will die’- How blessing scammers prowl streets

BBCTuyet van Huynh (left) is campaigning to track down the scammersChinese communities are being targeted by scammers who trick older women out of their valuables by persuading them their loved ones are in danger.
After a wave of cases on the streets of the UK, US, Australia and Canada, police are investigating and victims' families are trying to find the perpetrators.
The blessing scam is an elaborate piece of criminal street theatre. A gang of usually three women act out a well-rehearsed script in Cantonese for an audience of one – the unsuspecting victim.
Mungnee is a Chinese Malaysian Londoner in her sixties. She was approached in West London while on her way to yoga, by a crying woman. The woman asked in Cantonese if Mungnee knew a specific Chinese traditional healer in the area, as her husband was sick.
Mungnee feels she was drawn in by the scammers because she holds spiritual beliefsQuickly, a second Cantonese-speaking stranger appeared, claiming she knew the healer, and offering to take them to him. Mungnee was swept along, keen to help the woman who was so upset. On a quieter side street, a third woman joined the group, claiming to be related to the healer and went to see if he could help.
When she returned from speaking to the healer for 15 minutes, she had troubling news. Through his mystical powers, he had apparently discovered Mungnee was also in danger. He miraculously seemed to know all about her marriage problems, the shooting pain in her right leg – things Mungnee had not shared with them.
But the next revelation was what shocked Mungnee.
“Your son is going to have an accident in the next three days and he's going to die.”
The woman told Mungnee the healer could bestow a blessing that would protect her adult son.
The ladies told her: “You need to take a handful of rice, and put in as much gold and cash in a bag as you can”. They would say a blessing over the valuables.
Mungnee says she felt reassured by the promise her items would be returned to her after the blessing.
One of the women rushed Mungnee home to collect her jewellery, 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 quick as a flash – her hands are so nimble. I didn't see anything.”
When she got 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 says: “That's when I just turned cold.. and then I just told my son. ‘I think I've been conned. I've been scammed.’”
Some of the items stolen had been in the family for generations, passed down by her mother.