Woman Gives Her Rolex Watch to Scammers

A 74-year-old woman headed to a Target store in Hialeah last month to shop for a bike.
Instead, she got sold on a lottery-ticket scam that cost her Replica Rolex Watch.
Hialeah police are looking for two people who swindled the Miami Springs resident.
The lottery-ticket scheme is a long-running fraud, but this time Hialeah police obtained surveillance video of the two suspects: a heavy-set man in his 50s and a woman wearing a floppy pink hat and sunglasses, also in her 50s.
Hialeah police spokesman Carl Zogby called the photos a lucky break, since usually such fraudsters are like ``ghosts.''
``They commit their crimes and then they disappear,'' Zogby said.
Police continued their search for the pair Thursday.
Inside the Target store on West 37th Street, the victim -- who did not want to be identified -- was approached by the man, who first struck up a conversation about clothes.
Then he told her he needed help cashing a winning lottery ticket because he didn't have immigration papers. A woman -- seeming to be a good Samaritan -- chimed in that they needed to help him.
``Since he was an immigrant, I wanted to help him,'' the victim said at a news conference Wednesday.
The duo offered the victim $20,000 for her help, and asked for her Rolex as a guarantee she wouldn't cash the ticket and take the money. The con artists ended up disappearing with her watch.
So far this year, Hialeah police have recorded 15 cases of elderly residents falling victim to lottery-ticket scams.
Many times, the swindlers say they are illegal immigrants. Zogby stressed that Florida lottery players do not have to be residents or legal visitors to cash in their winnings.

``There's no basis to this scam,'' Zogby said. ``Don't be so trusting.''
In this case, the victim said she did not regret losing the watch, which she had owned for 35 years and was worth about $1,500.
``I regret the deception of people who are acting in good faith,'' she said in Spanish at the news conference.
Police asked anyone with information about this incident or similar cases to call them at 305-687-2525 or Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.