“Just borrowing from the rich” – Elderly M’sian Woman Jailed After 50 Years of Theft

An elderly Malaysian woman who is an adept thief and has been in and out of jail for the past 50 years has recently been arrested once again for pickpocketing tourists’ wallets in Singapore.

According to CNA, the 75-year-old Malaysian woman named Ng Kim Swee was sentenced to 4 years in jail on Wednesday (Nov 1) after pleading guilty to 3 charges of theft.

During mitigation, the woman said her gambler husband had abandoned her, leaving her to fend for herself and her children, so she felt that she was “just borrowing from the rich” to help her own situation.

The court heard that Ng was a serial thief whose modus operandi was to look for a target with an open handbag in crowded stores and that she would check for observers and closed-circuit television cameras before positioning herself out of the cameras’ line of sight.

She would then pretend to browse items next to her target before using her other hand to retrieve the target’s wallet.

In this way, Ng stole a wallet from an Indonesian tourist containing cards and cash of S$2,000 (RM6995) and 3 million rupiah (RM910), a Gucci wallet containing S$1,500 (RM5246) from a Singaporean woman, and a South Korean woman’s wallet, which contained US$750 (RM2623) and S$85 (RM297) amongst many other victims.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Jeremy Bin said Ng had been convicted of theft and house-breaking offenses in Malaysia in 1977, 1985, 1987, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2019, as well as several convictions in Singapore for theft from as early as 1971.

In the recent court hearing, her defence lawyer had argued that his client’s reason to do this was “for survival,” and what triggered the offenses was that she saw the misery that her son, who was in a wheelchair, was living in.

“The husband has abandoned her and neglected care for the children. The husband has never maintained her, leaving her to fend for herself and for her children.”

“She had no choice but to do all these things as she was desperate. She feels that she was just borrowing from the rich to help her in her dire situation. She’s aware that she has criminal antecedents, but she vows that this will be her final time,” he stated.

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