Pics by Dziyaul Afnan Abdul Rahman
KANGAR: In a span of less than an hour, a conman tricked sales assistants at two separate shops here and walked away with RM1,800 cash.
Based on security footages from one of the shops, it only took the conman about five minutes to pull of the deception.
According to one of the sales assistants, the man believed to be in his 40s and clad in blue shirt, had walked into a cosmetics shop in Jalan Penjara here, introducing himself as an employee with an air-conditioning services company.
The victim Nurakma Izatie Rashid, 27, she was manning the shop alone during the 12.50pm incident.
"He asked me if my employer and her husband were around and when I told him they were not in, he asked for their business cards and pretended to make a phone call to them.
"He put up a convincing act as if he knew my employers well and pretended discussing about a purported payment collection for his services while showing me the receipts.
"My employers entrusted me with issuing payments on their behalf when the cosmetic supplies arrived so I did not suspect anything amiss when he asked for RM950 in payment after he ended the phone conversation," she said.
It turned out that five minutes before the conman walked into the cosmetic shop, he had applied the same modus operandi to trick a 20-year-old sales assistant at an interior decoration shop located just 50 metres away to pay him RM850.
The shop owner later discovered the scam when she came arrived at about 5pm and immediately lodged a police report.
State Commercial Crime Investigation Department chief Deputy Superintendent Mohd Noor Daud said the cases have been classified under Section 402 of the Penal Code for cheating which carries a jail sentence of up to 10 years, caning and a fine, upon conviction.
Mohd Noor said police are tracking down the suspect based on the cosmetics shop's security camera footage.