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S'porean man in his 80s gets passport, phone & credit card stolen in Johor shopping mall
Only the phone has reportedly been found, in a garbage bin, as of Dec. 8.
Xueting Wu
December 09, 2025, 12:13 PM
An elderly Singaporean couple visiting Johor had to extend their stay for an additional night after the husband's passport was stolen at a shopping mall.
It happened around 5pm on Dec. 7, when the couple was browsing a store at a shopping mall in the Johor town of Skudai, Sinchew reported.
As captured by the store's CCTV camera, the wife was walking in front while the husband pulled a shopping trolley behind him.A man in a white cap then slowly came from behind, crouched down and reached into the trolley.
He grabbed a black bag before quickly turning and walking away to the right, hiding the black bag behind his own plastic bag.
Bag contained passport and phone
The couple, in their 80s, were in Johor to attend a lunch gathering organised by the National Taiwan University alumni association in Malaysia.
The secretary of the association told Sinchew that the husband of the couple, surnamed Lin (transliterated), had gone shopping with his wife after the lunch was over.It was only when the wife wanted to make a payment at the store that they realised their belongings were missing.
According to the alumni association secretary, surnamed Yang (transliterated), the bag that was stolen had Lin's passport, iPhone, credit card, and cash.
When Lin saw the CCTV footage of the theft, he suddenly remembered sensing that a man had been following closely behind him at the time.
Made police report
Lin later contacted his daughter in Singapore to cancel the credit cards, and use the "Find My iPhone" app to try to locate his stolen bag, according to Yang.However, the location detected by the app was rather broad, and so was not helpful.
Yang accompanied Lin to a police station to make a report.
At the same time, five or six members of the alumni association went around searching for the bag in various corners of the shopping mall, including the washrooms, but were unable to find it.
The couple had planned to return to Singapore right after their shopping, Yang shared.
Without Lin's passport, though, they were forced to change their plans and stay another night in Johor, then visit the Consulate-General of Singapore in Johor the next day to apply for a replacement travel document.Phone retrieved
After Lin's son learnt what had happened, he quickly travelled to Johor to search for his father's stolen bag, Yang told Sinchew.Finally, in the early hours of Dec. 8, the son managed to find the lost phone in a shopping mall garbage bin.
A security guard of the mall also told Yang and the family that CCTV cameras had captured the suspect getting on a car with Lin's bag.
