After being exposed and charged over blackmailing a grieving couple over a stolen mobile phone in April of this year, a Malaysian woman has entered a guilty plea at a Melbourne court yesterday.
Her hearing is scheduled for a later date.
Over the Easter holiday weekend, Melbourne-area parents Jay and Dee Windross left their Samsung S8 mobile phone in a shopping center bathroom. Twenty-four-year-old Siti Nurhidayah Kamal claimed that she had found the phone.
Inside were photos of the couple’s dying 11-month-old daughter, Amiyah, who has since passed away. Distraught over their seemingly lost memories, the couple made a public plea for the phone to be returned. Having seen their appeal, Siti contacted the couple and demanded they hand over AU$1,000 (RM2,900) if they wanted the phone back. The suspect did not actually have the phone.
Siti moved to Australia with her husband in September 2018, leaving her children behind in Malaysia.
She had been working as an Uber Eats delivery person in Melbourne, earning up to AU$120 per day, but alleges that she had fallen on hard times of late.
This was not Siti’s first brush with illegal activities. Soon after the story broke on Malaysian shores of her blackmailing, netizens were quick to remind the public that she is an allegedly wanted con woman here, accused of selling fraudulent Air Asia tickets to would-be travelers.
Siti has been denied bail by Magistrate Jan McLean.
