Help ID tricky theft suspects accused of distracting elderly woman to steal her purse
WANTED IN LACEY --
These two suspects will leave you seething – after Lacey Police say they preyed on an elderly woman -- knowing her kind heart would make her an easy victim to scam.
Detectives say the suspects tricked her into helping them look for a ring, which they claimed to have lost in the parking lot of Michael’s, just before 9am on September 4th. "This nice lady walks into Michael's and she does her shopping there and unbeknownst to her, these two suspects are actually in the store with her,” described Lacey Police Det. Jon Mason. “When she exits the store, they come up to her in the parking lot, as she's about to pullout and they go, 'Hey! Can you help us find this ring? We just dropped it and lost it in the parking lot." So, she gets out of her car, tries to help her find this ring and then while she's looking on the ground, they pull out of there and leave and wave at her and say, 'Thank you!' as they're driving by. What they did is they went into her car when she was out there looking for this ring and stole her purse."
Lacey Police say the two quickly used the victim's debit cards that were in her purse to buy gift cards at nearby stores. Detectives think they're both in their 20's and linked to a green sedan.
"I mean, she's actually trying to help somebody and talk about, 'No good deed goes unpunished,' so they're just looking for any victims, so anybody vulnerable, or anybody nice enough to help them, so going into her car, taking that purse out of there, these people just need to be off the streets. If there's any other victims out there that had a similar experience, maybe even have seen these people, we know that they've used other credit cards that have been stolen, so we don't know if they've been out of the mail, or other purse thefts, as well. The brazenness of these crimes that they're committing. We know they're out there doing this to other people and we want to stop them,” said Det. Mason.
If you know their names, use the P3 Tips App on your smart phone to submit the information to Crime Stoppers, or call the hot line at 1-800-222-TIPS(8477). It’s anonymous and you’ll get a cash reward of up to $1,000 if your tip helps lead to their arrests.