Johannesburg - Brazen criminals all over the country have found a new target: the elderly.
Authorities have recently been inundated with cases involving elderly people targeted as they exit shopping malls, while driving in their cars and even in their homes.
The victims are held hostage or captive, assaulted and their bank accounts emptied.
Private investigator Mike Bolhuis said there had been a clear escalation of crimes involving the elderly in Gauteng in particular.
“The elderly are specifically being targeted when they are leaving malls. The moment they enter their cars, they are approached by criminals who can easily overpower them.The criminals jump into the cars and drive away with their victims.
“They have a knife or gun pointed at their victims and force them to drive to the closest ATM. They steal whatever the victim has in his or her car and also force them to withdraw whatever they have in their accounts.
“They will drop them off at some point and either steal their car or drop the car off at a further point.”
Bolhuis said he was currently investigating a horrific case involving a couple from Johannesburg who had been held captive for five days.
“It is very bad story ...They were house sitting for a family who was on holiday. The guys entered the house, held them captive, and found out exactly what the elderly couple was worth. The couple had R400 000 in their account, which was stolen by the criminals over five days.
“Their bank accounts were completely emptied. The criminals also ransacked the house they were looking after, stealing everything inside. The couple was extremely traumatised by the ordeal.”
In Durban, fake cops kidnapped an elderly woman and settled for a ransom of R3 900 after first demanding R10 000.A 65-year-old woman found herself a victim this week when three fake women police officers and a fake policeman “arrested” her after wooing her out of a Hillcrest mall.
She and her son, whose identities are not being revealed because of fears the kidnappers would harm them, yesterday told Independent Media about her terrifying ordeal on Thursday.
Her very ordinary day was turned upside down while she was buying a pair of shoes when a woman, who appeared to be another customer, started making friendly conversation.
Their focus was then drawn by “a little girl” outside the shop who pleaded with them to “help me” after claiming to need an adult escort because she had stumbled across a packet of money.
In a flash, the elderly woman found herself confronted by people in civilian clothes flashing “police identity cards” at her and bundling her into a vehicle.
“They said ‘you are under arrest because that money came from an Indian who had died’,” she told Independent Media yesterday, still visibly shaken from the ordeal.
While in the car in their custody, she noticed they had driven past the Hillcrest police station.
“I asked why they weren’t stopping there. They said it was a Pinetown case.
“They asked who was going to pay my bail. I said my son is working.”
On hearing that he had a security business, they decided the “bail” should be R10 000 and called the son to instruct him to make a cardless deposit through a department store.When they had driven a bit further down the road, they confessed to her that they were not police but “gangsters”.
Then they tied a scarf tight around her neck, she said.
The kidnappers told her she was not in danger of being jailed, but that they would kill her.
Her son could immediately raise only R3 900 in response to her tearful pleas for help, all the time half choking because of the tight scarf. The abductors settled for this amount.
Meanwhile, they drove through Chatsworth and to Umlazi.
“They had not covered my face, so I saw a sign that read ‘Welcome to Umlazi’,” she said.
Once there, they dropped her in V Section before making off with her handbag and R500 she was carrying. She kept her new shoes.
Abandoned on the road, she was helped by local people.
Her son, accompanied by his brother, went to Umlazi to rescue her, preferring to go accompanied and in two vehicles in case they met with an ambush.
He vowed: “I want to catch them. I shall do everything in my power to catch them.”
The matter was reported to Hillcrest police, the son said, who provided this newspaper with the case number.
By the time of publication, police had not responded to requests for comment.
Private investigator Brad Nathanson said this was the second case of kidnapping of an elderly person for a ransom that he had come across in Durban.
Bolhuis, meanwhile, added that criminals were now specifically targeting elderly people as they saw them as easy pickings to empty their bank accounts and steal all their belongings.
“Kidnapping on a whole in the province and the rest of the country has increased substantially and has become a huge problem.”