HOUSTON — Expensive traditional gold necklaces are being stolen right off people’s necks across Texas.
It’s a string of crimes KHOU 11 has been reporting on for weeks, but now we’re learning it’s not only happening in the Houston area, but the thefts are also occurring in North Texas and the victims so far have all been of South Asian descent.
That includes a theft that was caught on camera back in October in Richmond. Several families living in the Aliana community reached out to KHOU 11 saying their older parents had expensive traditional golden jewelry stolen while out for a morning or evening walk.
“They were traumatized completely that day and even till today,” Jvotsna Malladi said.
Her parents were among the victims.
We also talked to a grandmother in Pearland who was also victimized.
"She's still in the state of paranoia," her daughter-in-law told us.
It's crime police in Frisco, near Dallas, say they're familiar with, too.
"Yeah, we had a string of them last year, they had stopped for a certain period of time, end of last month roughly was when we started seeing them occur again,” Frisco Police Department Officer Joshua Lovell said.
That spike they said appears to happen during the festive season of Diwali when it's customary for Indian men and women to wear more gold jewelry.
The thieves’ approach police said is usually the same, where they'll pull up next to an unsuspecting victim in a car and ask for help claiming they need a blessing.
"They get in close with them and either want to hug them or bless them, sometimes they want to put jewelry on them,” Lovell said.
He said they do that to misdirect them and either steal or swap the victims’ real jewelry often worth thousands of dollars with fakes.
"Any sort of reason that they can to get the person to lower their guard," Lovell said.
It's a crime that's still not as well known in the Houston area, but Colonel Vipin Kumar, the executive director of India House, a community center serving the Indian community in Houston, is hoping to change that.
"By nature, especially the Indian elderly people, they are very friendly. They're ready to bless anybody that comes to them,” Kumar said.
He shared it's upsetting to know the criminals are preying off the victim's kind nature and potential embarrassment over being victimized.
"It's really horrifying it's scary,” Kumar said.
It's why he plans on spreading the word to alert other South Asian communities.
"We have to be very careful, that's all, careful is the word," Kumar said.
Frisco police said they're investigating whether the same crew has been active in both North Texas and the Houston area. Meanwhile, Fort Bend County and the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office said they’re working together and investigating similar cases.