January 27 - 3:45 p.m. A 43-year-old woman and her 23-year-old daughter-in-law enter one of the large Sofia malls separately. Both have previous pickpocketing convictions in our country and in Europe. They spot a victim - a man carrying almost 19,000 leva in cash with the intention of exchanging them at the bank.
"The gentleman, who is the victim, was moving around the territory of the large shopping center, heading to the area of one of the escalators. "He was surrounded by people and at the moment when he showed maximum lack of concentration on his belongings, they managed to take them away," Senior Inspector Vitaly Tsvetkov, head of the group in the "Street Crime" sector at the SDVR, told bTV.
After committing the theft, the two women leave the shopping center and then leave the city.
The injured man feels that he has been robbed and reports it while still in the mall. The police officers from the "Street Crime" sector and the SDVR operational duty center locate the car in which the two women leave. They were detained in Ruse - 5 hours after the theft.
"During the procedural actions carried out, nearly 90% of the amount that was stolen was found in the car in which the persons were supposed to be“, says Vitali Tsvetkov.
In December and January, about 40 pickpocketings were committed in Sofia, and in the past month the police have uncovered about 70% of them.
"A large part of the perpetrators of this type of crime do not live in Bulgaria and return to Bulgaria for these holidays“, the inspector also points out.
The money was returned to its owner. And he wrote a letter of gratitude to the police officers who uncovered the crime.