Furniture scam

"Next time, bring along a thumb drive," a bored-looking policewoman said to me when I went to the Police Station to make a report a few days ago and handed her a computer-printed paper. Wow, do they expect complainants to submit their reports via thumb drives nowadays? That's a new development. Good to know. But the problem is, you know, how often does a person make a police report in his lifetime?

For me, that was just the second time I was making a police report in five days. All for the same matter. The second report was a follow-up to the first one. And what was the matter in the first instance? Well, it concerns a scam. An antique furniture scam.

Last Friday week, I was called down to the Kongsi by an alarmed secretary who said there were several people who were trying to take any the furniture in the premises, claiming that they had paid a middleman a substantial amount of money for it. My treasurer and secretary who were the first to be alerted, rushed to the premises and ordered them to cease their trespass and leave immediately.

You see, we never approved anyone to sell our Kongsi furniture. None of our committee members did. None of out trustees did. Some unscrupulous scammer must have made an unauthorised entry into our premises some weeks ago and had taken some pictures of our furniture. Then tried to hoodwink some unsuspecting buyers to part with their money on the promise of delivering the items to them.

The scam worked too well because the victim flew into town to meet the scammer who subsequently disappeared. I hear the Police are now looking for him and his wife.

So when I arrived at the Kongsi, but not before I had consulted a lawyer on this matter, my fellow trustees decided to lodge a first police report, if not for anything else, to safeguard ourselves in case the victim were to come back with local thugs or possessors or what. The second police report was just to reinforce our view that we shall hold the victim, the scammer and whoever was associated with them responsible if any untoward incident should happen to our premises.

We want to make it very clear that this matter has nothing to do with us except for the fact that the digital image of the furniture may now be finding its way through the Internet. We cannot prevent that. Of course, we are beefing up the security at the Kongsi in the meantime.