Amsterdam police have warned about a new sort of digital mugging, in which youngsters are being forced to make over money to robbers using a QR code. 

So far, five youngsters have been arrested for the crime and six reports about digital mugging have been made to the police. 

“It is not about bag snatching,” one police officer told the Parool. “Online platforms like Tikkie are being used to rob people instead.” Tikkie is a Dutch-developed instant payment system particularly popular among youngsters as a way of sharing bills.

Most of the incidents have taken place in the wealthy Zuid district, and some of the victims were also robbed of their shoes, jackets and airpods. 

Three of the teenagers who have been arrested are girls who functioned as mules and allowed their bank accounts to be used to transfer the stolen cash. 

The police were able to make the arrests because Tikkie payments leave a digital trail and the victims complained, despite being threatened by their muggers not to do so. “The children don’t dare to make a police complaint,” another officer told the paper. “Some of them know the suspects and that makes it even more difficult to get them to report it.”

Police suspect the real total number of victims is far higher than six and have urged parents to talk to their offspring about the problem.