You’re coming out of your house one morning and you try to put on your shoes. You instinctively try to push your foot into a shoe but somehow, the pair of shoes that you always had at that exact same spot is gone.
You look down annoyed because where could it possibly have gone?
And that’s when you realise, the shelf of shoes you had that was always full to the brim had a few pairs that were missing.
Are you kidding me?
Well, I kid you not.
This happened in Sengkang, in a condominium. You would have thought that with the extra security that you paid for, such things wouldn’t happen. But boy were we wrong.
Ramesh would’ve gone mad.
What Happened – The Neighbour Thief
In July, 41-year-old Filipino Warren Vicente Canabe was out for a jog near La Fiesta Condominium in Sengkang when he noticed that many families left their shoes outside their apartments.
Being quick in his thinking, he decided that that was going to be the way he makes it big. The way he’s going to make big money. By stealing all of them and selling them on Carousell or back in the Philippines.
How brilliant! Why didn’t anyone else think of that?
So off he went with his brilliant plan.
He started off small, stealing footwear about three to four times a week. He started by stealing a pair of $35 Adidas slippers and then later stole Nikes and Timberland boots that were valued upwards of $100. He had the perfect disguise too to make sure no one could notice him. He donned a cap, sunglasses and carried a huge haversack with him so that he could keep all the stolen shoes.
Sometimes, he even took the further step to steal other things like a Macbook and a kick-scooter.
He managed to steal a total of 122 shoes within a month, starting on 7 July before getting caught on 31 July.
How He Got Caught
One time, he stole two pairs of Timberland shoes worth a total of $450 and a pair of $320 Nike running shoes. These were on the top of a shoe cabinet along the common corridor and he just couldn’t resist the urge to swipe them.
The owner of the shoes later reported this incident to the police.
On a separate occasion, one owner made sure to check that his family’s footwear outside his apartment were all there before leaving for work. When he returned home from work, he found that his $159 Onitsuka Tiger sneakers and $99 Pedro shoes were gone, so he immediately made a report.
Canabe was clearing getting bolder by the day because he was making his rounds around a block when he saw a MacBook on a table next to an open window by the common corridor.
He then extended his hand into the window, pulled the tablecloth towards him and took the MacBook. The victim also later reported the incident.
The police finally found Canabe and searched his home where they found 122 pairs of shoes that Canabe could not account for. He was then arrested.
Canabe could have been jailed for up to three years and fined for each charge of theft. He could also have been jailed for up to a year and fined up to $3,000 for fraudulent possession of property. And for housebreaking to commit theft of the MacBook, he could have been jailed for up to ten years.
It is not known whether he managed to sell the footwear, but we hope that everything that was stolen was returned to their rightful owners.
