Motorbike thieves arrested after a million baht of bikes stolen
This week Pattaya Police arrested a group of motorbike thieves that they say are responsible for about a million baht worth of stolen bikes. The gang were arrested at a condo in Jomtien on Thursday afternoon by the Pattaya City Police Department. The raid captured 3 suspects, all between the ages of 22 and 23.
The trio were nabbed after being seen on CCTV while police were investigating a string of stolen motorbike reports around Pattaya and the surrounding area. The investigation found several witnesses who gave testimony and some video footage evidence gathered.
Police have been receiving many stolen motorbike reports recently prompting a deeper and more thorough investigation. The suspects reportedly admitted to stealing many motorbikes in the Pattaya area though they did not specify exactly how many as they said that they couldn’t remember them all.
When the police raided the condo, they found a room full of motorbike parts, and later many more parts were found at a motorbike shop that the group was using as a chop shop in Huayyai. The group had been stealing motorbikes, and stripping them for parts, removing all the valuable resellable items from the bike and then posting them for sale online.
Once they had stripped the bikes of anything of value they could sell, they dumped the remains of the bikes in a nearby reservoir to try to avoid the police finding them. The suspects reportedly admitted all these details during police interrogation.
On Friday, the Pattaya police spent over an hour at the Nong Chak Nonk Reservoir that the three alleged thieves had directed them to, pulling up the remaining parts of the stolen motorbikes. In the end, they were able to dredge over 50 motorbike remains from the depths of the reservoir.
Police have requested anybody who had recently had their motorbike stolen to come to the Pattaya police station on Soi 9 during regular business hours and file a police report for the missing bike. But don’t get too hopeful, the Pattaya police said that identifying the stripped bikes would be next to impossible.
SOURCE: The Pattaya News
