Pot Noodle swindler caught stealing from restaurant staff who felt sorry for him

A restaurant in Scotland has issued a warning after a man was caught swindling staff by asking for water for his Pot Noodle.

Workers at The Thai Bar & Restaurant in Glasgow felt sorry for a man who came in and asked them for hot water for his pot noodle.

But he used the distraction to steal a worker’s bank card and phone, which was caught on CCTV.

Footage of the incident shows looking for a phone before swiping it and placing it in his pocket, which the restaurant owner later said also had credit cards in it that were later used by the thief.

He is now warning other businesses in the area to be vigilant of similar thefts.

A Police Scotland spokesperson says: ‘We received a report of the theft of a phone at a premises on Kilmarnock Road, Glasgow, around 2.30pm on Saturday, 4 January, 2025.

‘Enquiries are ongoing.’

Some 78,000 people had phones or bags stolen from them on British streets in the year to March 2024.

That is a rise of more than 150% on the 31,000 ‘snatch thefts’ in the 12 months before, according to data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

Four in five police investigations were closed before a suspect was even found and just 0.8% of ‘theft from the person’ complaints resulted in a charge, the figures show.

Former Love Island star Wes Nelson revealed on Sunday that a thief allegedly stole his £8,570 Louis Vuitton designer bag with ‘everything important in it’ within a split second.

‘My LV [Louis Vuitton] bag was just stolen on the train just as we stopped at Milton Keynes. Had everything important in it,’ the 26-year-old wrote on Instagram.

‘I’m lucky I took my MacBook out before the journey. All my music would have been GONE,’ he continued.

‘Anyway just a heads up, it took a split second to look away and that s**t was gone. Rats everywhere.’

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