Two women with children came to a cinema in Bolesławiec on February 28. One of them had an infant, while the other was accompanied by a boy about 10 years old. The women spoke broken Polish and wanted to buy tickets for a film.
After hearing the price of two adult tickets and one child’s ticket, they decided they could not afford them and agreed that only the boy would go to the cinema. They bought a ticket for 19 zlotys, paying with a 200-zloty banknote. After receiving the change (181 zlotys), one of them began shouting at the boy and said that he was being naughty. She decided that he did not deserve to go to the cinema and asked for the ticket to be cancelled and the money returned.
The cashier cancelled the purchase and asked for the change and the ticket to be returned. At that moment, the boy entered the area behind the cash desk and distracted the cashier. While she was looking at him, she lost eye contact with the woman who was handing her the change and the ticket. The woman probably hid a 100-zloty banknote in her sleeve at that moment and returned only 81 zlotys. Unfortunately, this is difficult to notice on the surveillance footage. The distracted cashier took the change without counting it and returned the 200 zlotys.
The women who bought the ticket remained calm the entire time and did not even hurry to leave. The cashier realised that she had been robbed only when she checked the cash register balance at the end of the day.
“I had no idea that these women were deceiving me,” the cashier says. “But when I realised that 100 zlotys were missing from the cash register, I knew that this was the only situation in which I could have been deceived.”
The police spokesperson warns against similar situations. “You must not trust anyone,” says Anna Kublik-Rościszewska. “A person’s appearance and behaviour can be misleading. A mother with a child, a pregnant woman, a pleasant, elegant man, a friendly young man—anyone can commit fraud. All suspicions of fraud should be reported to the police,” the spokesperson adds.
(information: ii)