This Sydney woman lost $200K to a notorious street scam. Her family blames a ‘zombie drug’

When Laina Chan’s close relative was defrauded of almost $200,000 in cash and jewellery in an elaborate scam on the streets of Sydney’s inner west, the barrister’s first thought was that something even more sinister must be afoot.

Her loved one, Mei Lin*, is “very careful with her money” and doesn’t have spiritual beliefs, yet she willingly handed over her most prized possessions when scammers told her they needed to be “blessed” to prevent harm coming to her family.

Mei Lin is one of hundreds of victims in Sydney, and thousands around the world who have been targeted by the global con. It’s difficult to estimate the total number of victims due to low reporting rates, but based on known cases in the UK, US, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia, total financial losses probably exceed $100 million.

The “Chinese blessing scam” is believed to have originated in China and Hong Kong in the early 2000s. There were 800 reports of the scam in Hong Kong in 2002, and from there it spread to victimise the Chinese diaspora around the world.

When Chan realised Mei Lin may have been targeted by a highly sophisticated global syndicate, she became convinced that scopolamine, a drug also known as “devil’s breath”, had been used to “zombify” Mei Li into submission, a theory she passed on to the police.

“The police were very sceptical when I said it was part of a worldwide scam … and I didn’t feel that they believed me when I said they were using this drug,” Chan says.

“They just didn’t believe anything I said.”

The street fraud is a multi-act production that requires three actors to perform a carefully curated role. A staged chance encounter on the street quickly escalates as the scammers swoop in one by one. In a matter of hours, the victim has voluntarily gathered and handed over cash and jewellery.

Mei Lin, 85, still feels embarrassed about falling victim to the scam, given that she lives independently and doesn’t have any major health concerns. She doesn’t like to talk about it, and has never revealed to her family what was going through her mind when she handed over about $200,000 in cash and jewellery.

But the statement she gave to police describes a textbook example of how the theatrical fraud unfolds.

On January 11, 2018, Mei Lin was mailing documents at a post box on Henley Road in Homebush West when she was approached by a middle-aged Asian woman in a panic, who said she was looking for a special herb that she needed to save her injured daughter, who wouldn’t stop bleeding.

A second woman, pretending to overhear, joined the conversation to say that she knew a healer who could help. Engaging in small talk, she told Mei Lin she was also Chinese Malaysian. The two women then placed their hands on Mei Lin’s shoulders and guided her down a quieter street, where a man they said knew the healer joined the group.

After sending the first woman away to retrieve her money for a blessing, the man turned his attention to Mei Lin, sharing his concern that her daughter would succumb to a mysterious illness if her belongings weren’t blessed. Mei Lin was curious because the man seemed to know details about his daughter’s life.

The second woman escorted Mei Lin to her house and waited outside while she filled a bag with $196,000 worth of sentimental jewellery, including her most prized possession – a 1.87-carat diamond ring she bought back home in Malaysia in the 1970s.

The pair then travelled to Strathfield Plaza, where Mei Lin withdrew $5000, her daily cash limit, from the Commonwealth Bank branch inside and added it to her bag while the woman waited nearby.

What happens next still confuses Mei Lin. Having returned to the man at Henley Road, she can’t recall at what point she handed over her bag, but suddenly, it was being returned to her with the instruction to “take this home and put it next to your bed for three months”.

“Don’t touch it,” she was told.

Mei Lin began to feel suspicious as she drove away. As soon as she arrived home, she opened the bag and found a bottle of water and two candles.

After confiding in her brother-in-law, Mei Lin reported the scam to the police, but the investigation didn’t progress very far. CCTV was never recovered, and no arrests were made. Frustrated by the lack of action and in disbelief that Mei Lin could have been scammed so easily, Chan decided to advocate to the police on her behalf.

Chan says Mei Lin doesn’t believe in “spiritual blessings”, and while she is generous with her family, she is otherwise conservative with her money.

“There’s no way this would have happened but for the fact that they had used the drug and made her comply. It’s just all nonsense,” she says.

After asking her law enforcement contacts about scopolamine, Chan became convinced it explained Mei Lin’s scam.

“They come next to you, and they just blow a little bit at you, and you don’t even realise they’ve blown a little bit of a drug at you, and just enough to make you really compliant, so you’re hypnotised.”

Chan’s not alone in believing a loved one was drugged using scopolamine during the scam.

Tuyet van Huynh, the daughter of a UK victim, told the BBC in 2024 that CCTV from her mother’s London scam showed she “followed every instruction to the point where she was like a zombie”.

Van Huynh believes a drug like scopolamine must have been used because, like Mei Lin, her mother is not superstitious or spiritual and she complied unquestioningly.

Scopolamine, sometimes called “devil’s breath” in criminal contexts, is a highly potent tropane alkaloid in the nightshade family. Derived from nature, the drug can be easily extracted from Brugmansia flowers, also known as angel’s trumpets, that grow in temperate climates around the world.

Highly biologically active, scopolamine is best known for its use in common medications to prevent motion sickness, such as Kwells and TravaCalm, but its psychoactive properties have also seen it taken recreationally.

The use of scopolamine in crime, particularly thefts, has been well documented in Latin America, particularly Colombia, while reports are increasing in Europe.

“It causes a drug-induced delirium, but it also causes amnesia,” explains ANU Associate Professor David Caldicott, an emergency medicine clinician who also researches drug-facilitated crime.

“If you were to somehow get that inside an elderly individual, who knows what you could suggest in terms of making them part ways with their valuables. These are incredibly potent drugs.”

Powdered scopolamine is tasteless and odourless and, according to a 2013 study, can be absorbed via inhalation and place a victim under the drug’s effects within minutes.

Detection by authorities is made more difficult by the rapid elimination of scopolamine from the body. It can only be detected within 24 hours of its ingestion.

Caldicott says that only a very small dose would be needed to affect an elderly woman.

The use of scopolamine in Chinese blessing scams hasn’t been established by law enforcement in any jurisdiction. In a statement, NSW Police said that while investigations continue, “there is no evidence or inquiries being made into the use of drugs to facilitate the scams”.

In April this year, NSW Police’s North West Metropolitan Region launched Strike Force Sentinel to co-ordinate its response after a surge in reported blessing scams around the city, including in the Ryde, Burwood, Parramatta and Hornsby areas.

In July, NSW Police charged two Chinese nationals and issued arrest warrants for seven others in connection with 85 reported scams over two years that resulted in more than $3 million stolen. They said they had counted at least 50 alleged scammers, 25 of whom had been identified.

The ongoing probe is limited to cases from July 2023 onwards. Cases reported before 2023, such as Mei Lin’s, as well as the many that have gone unreported, undoubtedly place the true number of Sydney victims in the hundreds.

Chan questions why there hasn’t been a more organised effort sooner, given the global nature of the fraud and that victims such as Mei Lin were being targeted long before 2023. It’s not clear if the same syndicate is responsible for Mei Lin’s scam.

Mei Lin’s scam was investigated by the Auburn Police Area Command, but Chan believes local police aren’t equipped to tackle a sophisticated international scam.

“The way our police system works, with a lack of co-ordination, means even if we’ve captured this bunch of people, another bunch of people might be operating in the very next area,” she says.

Law enforcement around the world has struggled to apprehend the scammers, who frequently fly in and out of the country, usually on tourist visas.

In a July press conference, Detective Superintendent Guy Magee described the scammers as “FIFO criminals”.

“They’re organised criminals that fly in for short periods of time, on up to 20 occasions over two years, and fly out,” he said.

Magee also commented on the low reporting rates associated with scam victims, as well as the Chinese community.

“Anecdotally, I think the offending is probably at least double what we think,” he said.

“It’s disgraceful when you think about who they’re targeting. It’s their own culture that they have that inside knowledge of, and they’re capitalising on that knowledge.”

* Mei Lin is not her real name. The victim requested anonymity due to the embarrassment she feels at being scammed.

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