The men met Liliana Venegas while out in clubs and bars.
Cops say it’s a scam victimizing hundreds of men across the country; beautiful flirty women stealing Rolex watches from men they meet in bars and nightclubs.
Arvin Malhi, a 40-year-old sales executive, told Inside Edition that he was sporting his new $28,000 Rolex while at a bachelor party in Miami when 24-year-old Liliana Vanegas approached him.
“She said, ‘I don't like boys, I like men’,” he said.
He thought he had a connection with the woman and invited her back to his oceanfront hotel suite, where he took off his watch and put it on a nightstand.
“She wasn't interested in me, she was clearly interested in my watch,” he said.
He said she kept pushing him to drink. Then, as he started falling asleep, he said he saw her swipe his watch from the night table and take off.
“I said ‘Hey!’ Before I could say anything else, she was gone,” he recalled.
He jolted awake and ran after her. She was arrested a few miles away after he called cops with her license plate.
“Unfortunately, they searched the whole car. They were not able to find my watch,” he said.
Vanegas was charged with grand theft. In her mug shots, she is wearing a Versace necklace allegedly stolen from another victim. Police said knockout drugs were found in her purse. She has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.
What happened to Malhi wasn't an isolated incident.
“Every guy thinks they know better until a stunning girl gives them a compliment,” security expert Bill Stanton told Inside Edition. The women follow a similar plan, he said.
“They are going to see a guy sitting by himself, they are going to sit down and give that guy a compliment and then when he's not paying attention, they are going to spike his drink with a drug,” he said.
“Then comes the offer, ‘Why don't we go back up to your hotel room?’ And if that guy does that, it's goodnight Irene, because he's going to wake up minus his wallet, his cash and his watch.”
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Inside Edition hired two models to see if men would accept drinks that could easily be spiked. It didn't take long for guys to accept shot after shot.
Inside Edition’s Lisa Guerrero asked one of the men: “Did you take a drink from a stranger?”
He laughed and said: “Yes!”
Guerrero asked one of the models if she thought the men were too trusting.
“I think so,” she said. “It would have been too easy to actually have slipped something in their drinks.”
