Nine-Year-Old Boy Foils $164,000 Robbery

Yahoooooooo ^ | 09/02/03 | Staff Writer

[bedolido]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A quick-witted nine-year-old boy thwarted robbers who made it out of his home with $164,000 in cash before they were nabbed by police alerted to the caper by his covert cell phone call.

Shidal Hossain used a blanket to hide a cell phone when the unidentified robbers came to rob his home and then slipped into his bedroom to call his father for help.

Shidal was watching cartoons with his four brothers -- one of them just nine days old -- when the trio of robbers knocked on the door of the family's Brooklyn home on Thursday morning.

Pretending to be building maintenance workers, they persuaded Shidal's 3-year-old brother to open the door before charging in and threatening Shidal's mother and brothers with what turned out to be a pellet gun.

Police nabbed them on the street nearby and recovered the $164,000 in cash, which the family was hoping to send back to relatives in Bangladesh.

Shidal remembers being "a little" scared when his mother spoke to him in Bangladeshi, telling him to sneak away with the family's cell phone to call his father. "My mom gave me the telephone. I hid it under the blanket," he said on Friday.

"I was in Pennsylvania when he called me," the elder Hossain said. So, he called relatives, neighbors and the police. "He did a good job," he said of Shidal, who is going into the fourth grade this autumn.

Kevin Munoz, 19, Abab Villanueva, 22 and Arelin Cales, 22, were being held by police on charges including robbery, burglary and grand larceny.

[MEG33]

So much cash...hmmm

[Mears]

$164,000.00 cash in the home. They were asking to get robbed.

I'm not blaming the victim here but a little common sense has to come into the equation.

[Onelifetogive]

Police nabbed them on the street nearby and recovered the $164,000 in cash, which the family was hoping to send back to relatives in Bangladesh.

Sticking $164K in cash into an envelope and mailing it to Bangladesh...this seems like a pretty good idea...

[r9etb]

I tell ya what -- them furners have really got to stop keeping huge stacks of cash in their houses.

When I lived in Houston there were all kinds of home invasion-type robberies, many of which involved violence and murder. It was always this same story -- getting ready to send money to the folks back home.

$164,000 seems a bit excessive to be sending back to Bangladesh, however.

There's more to this story.

[VRWCmember]

recovered the $164,000 in cash, which the family was hoping to send back to relatives in Bangladesh.

Attention Homeland Security Department, you might want to keep an eye on these folks.

[CurlyDave]

recovered the $164,000 in cash, which the family was hoping to send back to relatives in Bangladesh.

Sounds like some sort of money laundering operation. The crooked parents may be in more trouble than the crooks.

[laker_dad]

IRS on line 2...

[Imal]

Police nabbed them on the street nearby and recovered the $164,000 in cash, which the family was hoping to send back to relatives in Bangladesh.

Call me a skeptic, but I'm not sure the robbery and how it was foiled are the most interesting aspects of this story.

[csvset]

Three year old answering the door?

[wideawake]

What they would have done is to bring it in to a currency exchange/ bank wiring place, and wired it to Bangladesh in increments small enough not to draw immediate attention to the transfer.

I wonder what the IRS thinks of this situation.

[BlessedBeGod]

There's more to this story.

Yes, like did the perps know they had the money in the home.

[fishtank]

With a name like Hossain.............

[mtbopfuyn]

I've nothing else to add other than a high five for getting to the meat of the story in 12 short posts. Too many questions with this situation.

[Daus]

Police nabbed them on the street nearby and recovered the $164,000 in cash, which the family was hoping to send back to relatives in Bangladesh.

Were they going to buy the WHOLE country of Bangladesh? They might have had a little extra even.

[Orangedog]

If they were US citizens the police would have confiscated the money and made the owners prove that it wasn't drug money. A lot of people have had much smaller amounts confiscated at traffic stops and either had to spend months trying to get it back or never saw it again.

[redheadtoo]

$164,000.00 cash in the home. They were asking to get robbed.

It is common for Asians to keep large sums of money in their home and, yes, it attracts thieves.

We have a large Vietnamese community in Southern California. They have often been victimized by Asian gangs because of their practice of keeping a large stash of cash in their homes.

The gang will invade the home, tie up the residents, steal all the money and jewelry they find, rape the teenage daughter and then escape. The situation is made worse because few of the victims will report the crime to the police.

[montag813]

Police nabbed them on the street nearby and recovered the $164,000 in cash, which the family was hoping to send back to relatives in Bangladesh.

Too bad. At least the theives would have spent the money in the United States.

We can't win. We send all our new jobs overseas, and the immigrants we let in send their cash back from whence they came.

[Ichneumon]

Police nabbed them on the street nearby and recovered the $164,000 in cash, which the family was hoping to send back to relatives in Bangladesh.

Would those relatives happen to run a hashish farm?

[Itzlzha]

Excellent point!

I believe that anyone from that area that has had to make those "involuntary doantions" of whatever $$$ they had on them needs to now file a class action suit against the police for discrimination and fraud!

$164,000...to BANGLADESH?!?! In exchange for WHAT???

Either terrorism or Heroin from the Golden Triangle!