CRIME | Car owners blackmailed in Gongbei, license plates stolen

A new extortion tactic has recently emerged in Gongbei in which criminals would steal license plates from vehicles of mainland Chinese and Macau origin and demand the car owners pay up to thousands to get their plates back.
Macau Daily reported that in one of these cases, a Macau businessman with the surname U had his plates taken away last Friday at an open-air parking lot in Gongbei. He also found a note on his car that had the account number of a mobile instant messaging application written on it.
After adding the account number to his contact list, U was asked to send his plate number before being told that he had to pay RMB1,000 for the return of his plates. While U successfully reduced the “ransom” to RMB500 after negotiation, the criminal eventually refused to seal the deal because U demanded to do the transaction in person. The businessman then decided to call the police.
U suspected that the criminals are aware of the series of procedures to which car owners are subjected to be re-issued mainland license plates. Therefore, some car owners would rather pay the criminals for their stolen plates.
U also revealed that, after sharing his experiences on the Internet, he received a lot of replies informing him of their own similar experiences; some of these replies even came from his own friends.  He estimated that there are more than 10 cases that have happened to people he knows. In fact, some had to pay up to RMB3,000.
Meanwhile, the police authorities in Gongbei have advised people to leave their cars in secured parking lots. It also urged people to notify the police if they fell victim to crimes instead of paying the blackmailers.
In fact, a similar scheme had been reported in Zhuhai in July 2012. The authorities later arrested three men who were involved in 18 cases.