Footage shows robbery incident in Malaysia, not the Philippines

Warning: violent content

The video was posted here on Facebook on June 6, 2023.

The 57-second clip, which has been viewed more than 370 times, shows CCTV footage of a man attacking a woman inside an elevator. He is seen punching and kicking her, and taking away her handbag.

"Recent holdup insident (sic) inside Lucky Chinatown mall elevator," reads the post's caption, referring to a mall in Manila (archived link). "Beware when riding elevators specially (sic) when alone."

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Screenshot of false post taken June 9, 2023

The video has been viewed more than 420 times after it was shared with a similar claim on Facebook here, here and here in 2023 and here in March 2019.

However, the claim is false.

Malaysia robbery

A Google reverse image search using keyframes from the video, followed by a keyword search, found the same video was tweeted by Sumisha Naidu, then a Malaysia-based journalist, on February 16, 2019 (archived links here and here).

"Police are looking for this man who attacked and robbed a 48-year-old woman in a lift at the Taman Mutiara MRT station on February 14 at 6.45am," the tweet said.

Taman Mutiara Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station is located in Cheras district in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

The clip appeared in a report published on the YouTube channel of the Star, a Malaysia-based English newspaper, on the same day (archived link).

"A viral video of a robber who brutally beat up a 48-year-old woman inside the Taman Mutiara MRT station's lift in Cheras has sparked outrage," the report said. "The incident which took place on Valentine’s Day (Feb 14) was caught on CCTV."

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the false post (left) and the genuine footage tweeted by Sumisha (right):

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Berita Harian, a Malay-language newspaper, and the New Straits Times, another English-language daily in Malaysia, also reported on the incident (archived links here and here).

According to the reports, the suspect took the victim's purse, containing her ID and ATM cards, as well as 400 Malaysian ringgit ($86) cash.

The Kuala Lumpur police office released a statement on Facebook on February 19, 2019, when they announced the arrest of the suspect (archived links here and here).

"On 14 February 2019, at approximately 9:42 am, the Kuala Lumpur Police received a police report from a woman who was robbed by an unknown man in the Taman Mutiara MRT lift, Cheras," the statement says.

"Acting on intelligence information, on 18 February 2019, at approximately 8:10 pm, a police team from Division D9 of the Cheras District Police Headquarters raided an address located in Taman Cheras, Kuala Lumpur.

"In the raid, the Police managed to arrest the suspect, a 26-year-old Indian man."

A Malaysian court sentenced the man to 18 years in jail and five strokes of the cane, Berita Harian and the Star reported on June 21, 2019 (archived links here and here).

Statements from Manila

On June 9, 2023, Manila Police District spokesman Philipp Ines also confirmed to AFP that the "incident certainly did not occur here in Manila".

In a statement posted on its official Facebook page on the same day, Lucky Chinatown said the video was not filmed inside its mall (archived link).

"We have been informed of an old video that resurfaced and has been circulating again on various online platforms, falsely claiming a robbery incident inside our mall," the mall's statement reads.

"The incident shown in the footage occured in one of the MRT stations in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia," it adds.