Mysterious hypnosis robbery case just a play act: police

The mysterious robbery case at the Tin Huy gold shop in Binh Son District in Quang Ngai Province was just a play act by the owner and her relative, concluded the local police after a four-day investigation.

After analyzing fingerprints and the identities of the suspects, the police have arrested 22-year-old Ngo Quang Truong, a cousin of Nguyen Thi Thuy, the jewelry shop owner.

Truong, who also lives in Binh Son District, confessed to the police that he was the one who had acted as the masked robber having hypnotizing abilities.

According to Colonel Tran Van Sang, head of the local police department, the play could have been set up by Nguyen Thi Thuy to cheat her creditors so she could avoid paying back her debts.

The police department in Quang Ngai Province is continuing investigation to ascertain all allegations.

Nguyen Thi Thuy on Friday claimed that a masked robber hypnotized her and took away gold and cash worth more than US$200,000, but many local experts are of the view that it is impossible for someone to use hypnosis to commit a robbery.

According to Colonel Mai Van Tan, chief of the Ho Chi Minh City Investigation Police Department, there have been no reports of such cases in the city before.

“We are used to handling cases in which victims claim they became unconscious and gave away all their money and jewelry to robbers after hearing some words spoken by the robbers. But investigations later proved these stories false,” Tan said.

For example, one victim claimed that he had given away billions of dong to an unknown man.

But in fact, the unidentified swindler had convinced him to jointly participate in black brass and meteorite trade.

Meanwhile, Du Quang Chau, Director of the Radiesthesia Research and Application Center at the HCMC-based Hong Bang International University , said that no one can be hypnotized if they didn’t want to be hypnotized.

According to Chau, hypnotism is a dreamlike state in which people are in complete possession of their senses.

It’s untrue to say that people who are hypnotized will act at the behest of the hypnotizer.

A person cannot be hypnotized against their will. Hypnosis is possible only if there is cooperation between the hypnotist and the subject.

Agreeing with Chau, a prosecutor at the HCMC People’s Procuracy, told Tuoi Tre newspaper that the case in which the robber used hypnosis to rob a jewelry shop owner lacks scientific evidence.

He said many circumstances in this case need to be verified. Chau said that there were no reports of robberies in which the victims voluntarily gave the robbers all their money and property.

However, he admitted that some robbers have put a kind of anesthetic drug into the victims’ drink and food or sprayed it on them and then robbed them.

Last Friday, a rare incident occurred at a gold shop in the central province of Quang Ngai when shop owner Nguyen Thi Thuy voluntarily gave around 100 taels of gold and other cash worth more than $200,000 to a masked robber.

After willingly giving away the valuables, Thuy fainted.

Thuy later said the robber came to her shop to purchase half a tael of gold and paid for it.

But she was then delirious and put around 100 taels of gold into a bag and took another VND1 billion of cash from her strongbox and gave it to him.