27 people arrested for 1.5 billion baht Police Credit Union fraud
Twenty-seven credit union officials, police officers, and former police officers have been arrested for defrauding the Pattalung Police Credit Union out of 1.5 billion baht.
On March 24, members of the Pattalung Police Credit Union filed a complaint to the Assistant Commissioner-General, Surachate “Big Joke” Hakparn, that some police and credit union officials were working together to steal money from the credit union.
Big Joke announced that 27 suspects were involved in the case, including 12 credit union officers, six police officers, three former police officers, and five people outside of the union.
It was found that they had been fraudulently working together for nearly 20 years, from 2001 to 2020. Their defrauding actions were done in ten different ways, like window dressing and counterfeiting documents and receipts.
The losses were worth nearly 1.5 billion baht, which affected many police officers and their families in Pattalung province.
The police report revealed that officers managed to seize about 1 billion baht worth of assets and money, such as cash, land, houses, condominiums, resorts, markets, cars, motorcycles, etc.
On August 22, police raided nine locations in Pattalung and seized money and assets worth about 694 million baht. On September 13, police investigated 25 locations in Chanthaburi, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Trang, and Pattalung and seized assets totalling 309 million baht.
The 27 criminals face five charges:
- Section 157 of the Criminal Laws related to public administration: Any government official who wrongfully or dishonestly exercises or avoids exercising any of his duties shall be punished with imprisonment of one to ten years and fined from 2,000 to 20,000 baht.
- Section 264 of the Criminal Laws related to counterfeiting and alteration: Whoever fabricates a false document or part of a document to make any person believe that it is a genuine document shall be punished with imprisonment of up to three years, fined up to 60,000 baht, or both.
- Section 265 of the Criminal Laws related to counterfeiting and alteration: Whoever counterfeits documents of right to official documents shall be punished with imprisonment of six months to five years and fined of 10,000 to 100,000 baht.
- Section 335 (7) of the Criminal Laws related to the offence against property: Whoever commits theft upon things by having two persons upwards participating shall be punished with imprisonment of one to five years and fined of 20,000 to 100,000 baht.
- Section 335 (11) of the Criminal Laws related to the offence against property: Whoever commits theft upon things belonging to or in possession of the employer shall be punished with imprisonment of one to five years and fined of 20,000 to 100,000 baht.
Officers spent 240 days investigating the case and interviewed 959 witnesses. The officers added that they gathered information and evidence from over 50,000 papers, and these would be submitted to the court for the next prosecution process.
