>> City officials and community groups are alerting neighbors of a crime targeting elderly Chinese women, at least 5 residents have been victims of the so-called blessing scams.

Officials say the victims have been scammed out of tens of thousands of dollars and the perpetrators have yet to be identified.

Joining us, our Grace Chan McKibben executive director of the Coalition for a better Chinese American Community and 11th Ward Alderwoman.

Nicole, we thanks to you both for joining us.

grace.

Let's start with you.

Please explain what the scams are for a so-called blessing scams.

Yet the scams work roughly the same >> elderly elderly woman is see the waiting at the bus stop or walking on the street and she encounters a middle-aged woman who speaks Cantonese and ask for directions to a miracle.

Doctor.

So I've heard about a miracle doctor who can perform miracles in cure all kinds of illnesses and they are around here.

You look like a nice person.

Can you help me?

Find them.

And then they get into a conversation and that we do.

Women typically would walk with the younger women for some time and then they would come up on what seems to be another person that just chance to come upon.

Another woman You know, I've heard of the stock to before and my family, my mother, my relative had been could buy this person and then they got into more and then sometimes is a 3rd person involved sometimes isn't the 3rd woman but also corroborate the story and then what ended up happening is that they would talk to the Stockton on the phone and the women would convince the older person, the somebody this to to them a child or grandchild in grave danger and that she needed 200 blasting a miracle.

And the miracle involves putting money heirlooms in a bag and the bag.

And the the pope, the victim usually ends up with a bottle miracle water.

And there was this for the long and somewhere during with the prayer or the so-called blessing over the goods and money.

>> They swapped out that bag.

Don't open it for a few more days, correct.

And then, of course, by the time she looks into it, tell me a little bit about how white, you know, this group of women is being targeted and how the scammers are able to sort of gain their trust and their confidence.

Yeah, I they probably are just out of the street looking for people that are by themselves.

All the victims are older people that are either coming going to the grocery store coming back from the grocery store.

In one case.

>> The victim was actually coming back from having received food at a food pantry.

So basically they're just looking for people that may be by themselves older, possibly more testing the more vulnerable.

They're also interesting is some of it is cultural to to trust the sort of a younger person to to help you out with something even culture.

I to older people everywhere, trust younger people to I think older people everywhere looking for folks that they can talk to some time.

So lonely.

>> And then also that the the Vince Start having a conversation and always a bit of time they would ride the bus together, walk together during this.

>> Time the perpetrator scheme trust by asking about the victim's family and where they weather from what you family members they have and so on and in.

So doing gained.

Also more information about them.

>> Well, the woman helped you in your office responded to the aftermath of this.

So we we first heard about it from Grace and her staff and we absolutely asked if they've filed a police report.

That's always our first question.

We encourage everybody to file police reports of that.

We can collect the data.

The police can begin to sense trends.

So we've been working with the 9th district police as well as the financial Crimes unit detectives working on the case and actively investigating it.

So yeah, we've helped to put people in touch folks within the Chinatown Neighborhood Watch Network who have access to cameras.

That's how we were able to get some still photos as well as a license plate to hand over to the as of as evidence based on that.

Is there anything we know about the perpetrator's yet?

>> You know there there were 7 enough to know to wear hats where, you and 95 masks skies on.

They were disguising their identity.

So it's been difficult to identify the women.

You know, so police have been asking if anybody witnessed any of these crimes going on and maybe they would have seen something.

>> That might be helpful.

So, you know, there's an open call out to the community for anybody with information or additional video footage shot send it over to the police.

>> Grace, this has happened in China.

Towns Chinatowns in other cities across the country and even internationally.

What do we know about those?

Yeah, we have heard.

So the first person came to us came in the middle of August 2 after she had already reported to police.

So reasoning is so that we can share on Weechat on the Chinese social media so that other people would fall for the same scam.

And then we had since heard from people from other China tells as well as we heard from the fellas reporter who works with BBC that there maybe cases they're similar in London's Chinatown, too.

Alderwoman.

Is there anything that can be done to help the victims or, you know money and possessions?

In some cases, you know, family heirlooms or they just gone.

>> unfortunately think right now they're just gone.

>> I know the police are actively working to investigate the case, but that we know that the first reported case of this happened in May.

And there was not another reported case until August.

We suspect that there's probably other victims out there who just aren't talking about it.

You know, so there's a there's a request out to the community at this point to ask if anybody else fell victim to the same group of scammers so that we can continue to build a case against them.

I think more than anything, the best thing that we can do for the community at this point is to raise awareness for these these scammers in particular that we've haven't had another reported case since the end of August.

But it's campus in general.

You know, there are so many different ways people are trying to scam people, especially the elderly who fairly from old herbal as we were speaking about earlier, are victims or is there a chance that they are eligible for victims Assistance fund?

>> That I'm not.

I'm not familiar So I'm not sure that there's anything that there may be able to recover.

I don't know how many of them actually had like homeowners insurance or anything like that.

Most of the seniors, I think we're living in senior buildings are like renting apartments.

I highly doubt that they had insurance to cover some of these losses.

Unfortunately, grace, how do we prevent scams like this from happening in about 30 seconds?

Yeah, I think that if you have an older person you know, in your >> neighborhood are older defense piece.

Just look out for I think we've been sharing a lot about avoiding phone and text scams, but also avoid, you know, scams.

If you talk to oppressive, I think sometimes people are less on