Crime Watch

SEMI-GOOD SAMARITAN A local 68-year-old woman reported a theft and partial recovery of her wallet last week. The woman discovered that her wallet was missing when she went to grab it at a diner on West 67th Street last Friday. She assumed that she had lost it at a Pax café location earlier that day in Midtown, but when she went to review the security footage with the manager there, it showed her entering and leaving the spot with her wallet in tow. Having no other leads, the woman canceled her credit cards and assumed the wallet was gone forever. Five days later, however, she received it in the mail, sent anonymously. The credit cards had not been used, and everything was in place-except for $280 cash, which someone must have considered a reward for a sort-of good deed. DON'T TURN AROUND Last Monday at about 5 p.m., a man was returning home after a trip and had parked his car outside his apartment to unload the contents. He placed a suitcase on the sidewalk and then carried some other items into the West 74th Street apartment building, leaving only for a few minutes. When he returned, however, his Fuji luggage had vanished. The contents included a $700 pair of Calvin Klein sunglasses, a $400 Blackberry, a $150 Montblanc pen and other items totaling $1,820 in value, as well as personal papers. CAUGHT WITH THEIR PANTS STOLEN Last Wednesday, two men walked into the Theory clothing store on Columbus Avenue and grabbed six pairs of women's pants from a shelf. An employee spotted the pair walking out with the pants, which totaled $4,050 altogether, and hopping onto a northbound M7 bus. The intrepid employee flagged down a police officer and told him what had happened, and the police were able to stop the bus at West 70th Street and Broadway. When the cops boarded the bus, they caught the two thieves sitting in the back with their haul, and the employee identified them before they were arrested for grand larceny. HIDE YOUR MOTORCYCLES The 20th Precinct recorded several motorcycle thefts from Upper West Side streets in the past week. In one incident, a man parked his blue Yamaha bike outside his apartment building on West 70th Street last Thursday evening. When he went to ride it on Friday afternoon, it was gone. Camera footage recorded outside his building showed that in the middle of the night, a dark-colored van with white markings pulled up, two unknown men got out and loaded the motorcycle into the van, and then they sped away. In another incident the same night outside West 84th Street, a man had left his $14,000 red 2012 Ducati motorcycle parked outside only to find it had vanished as well the next morning. BANK SCAM A local man reported a scam attempt to police last week. He discovered from his bank that an unknown person had used his personal information to create a fake ID and then tried to withdraw $3,500 from a Chase branch downtown on Water Street. The man told police that he is in possession of all of his bank cards and information and doesn't know how this fraudster could have impersonated him.