There’s a shop fraudster about and the police said “there’s no case because the salesgirls should have been more careful”

This man is going about the shops in busy retail areas, tricking people at the till out of small sums like 30 euros, with the theft noticed only when the sales are rung up at the end of the day and a discrepancy registered.

Somebody who owns a few shops at Bay Street in St Julian’s rang me on Monday to say that he had noticed similar thefts at all shops and when he went through the CCTV footage, the same man was identified each time.

The girls working in the shops couldn’t tell him whether the man is Maltese or not because they themselves are not Maltese and can’t immediately identify a person as Maltese by the way he speaks.

All these pictures are taken from CCTV footage at the Bay Street shops and were sent to me by the owner. Now a screen-grab showing the same man has been uploaded on Facebook by a perfumery in Paola too.

There are probably a whole lot more shops who have been scammed by the same man and who have either not noticed yet or who think they are alone in it.

Please circulate these pictures or this blog-post.

The shop-owner who rang me first went to the police at the St Julian’s – Spinola Bay – station and got no job. The constable on duty refused to take his report, saying that she needed advice from the station sergeant as to whether it is “fraud or theft”. As far as I know, police officers do not cite the law when taking a report on a crime, but merely take a description of what occurred. The shop owner waited for a long time at the station until the constable finally got hold of the sergeant, and then he was told that “there is no case because the salesgirl should have been more careful”.

I told him to go straight to Police HQ and file his report there, including a report on what he was told at the St Julian’s station, which is notoriously unprofessional.

This is the trick the man uses. He goes to the counter with something that costs around five euros and hands over a 100-euro note to pay for it. The salesgirl hands him 95 euros changes, he turns away a little pretending to put them back in his wallet, then produces a fiver and says “I have a five-euro note. Just give me back the hundred and I’ll give you this and your change.” Meanwhile, he removes anything between 30 and 50 euros from the change, depending on the notes and coins which constitute it. The salesgirl doesn’t notice his sleight of hand and thinks that change he has handed back is the change she gave him, so doesn’t count it as it would seem rude and suspicious.