There is a story last month telling that an old lady was tricked into buying loads of dried abalone, thinking them to be from Japan worth thousands of dollars but in reality those are produced in mainland and hardly worth a few hundred bucks. They pretended to be mobile hawkers, selling dried abalone on the street. The victim approached and started to examine the goods, while the accomplice, disguised as passerby, also approached and made comments on the cheap dried abalones. She made statements such as how good quality the dried abalones were in, how cheap those were, and how profitable it would be to buy those here and sell it somewhere else. Believed that the accomplice was some random person who coincidentally passed by, the old lady, the victim was convinced that buying those in the given price was an good idea.

However the old lady flinched upon hearing how much those costed. Now the accomplice said she would share the cost with the victim half-half, with intention to buy those dried abalones herself. Again, thinking the accomplice to be a benign, goodhearted woman, she thought it is the opportunity of the year to make a margin. With her guard down, the victim paid $3000, only to be told by her son that those abalones were available in proper stores for around $300.

Scam? In my housing estate? It is more likely than you think! Now one may say that the old lady should share the responsibility of being gullible enough to be tricked, but that is an argument I do not agree upon. Blame the perpetrator and not the victim! After all, how can we blame the old lady who lived through her life in a society much simpler and purer than ours?

It is now up to us to fix the situation! An obvious solution is to have more guards on petrol, constantly noticing if there is anything suspicious going on around the neighborhood. However the guards will go tired or overlooked, and we need to do better than that. We can educate the aged residents on the new confidence tricks that are common nowadays. We make things difficult for the criminals by teaching the old people every trick in the book, and arm themselves against the frauds. The association can organize seminars, and enough residents to join and listen. They can also join forces with local schools to perform dramas based on those stories, to help teaching the neighborhood in a fun way.

Human could not help but deprecates with time, and one's wit inevitably declines as time goes by. Taking advantage of senile people are just low, deprived of any common decency. We must stop these despicable crimes here and now. Spread the words and take measurements. Help to protected our beloved estate.