Police bust 4 drug runners with 150 million baht of meth

About 150 million baht worth of methamphetamine pills were impounded in Nakhon Phanom today in a bust of 4 suspected drug runners. Police and military cooperated to nab 4 men, aged 21 to 36 hailing from Mukdahan. Nakhon Phanom is a northeastern Thai province that borders Laos, separated by the Mekong River. A press conference was held this afternoon at the police station to announce the bust.

Two vehicles alleged to be part of a drug trafficking ring were seized in the bust and found to contain 770,000 pills of methamphetamine. A Toyota Fortuner was the first car stopped in That Phanom, with Bangkok-registered license plates. It was inside this car police found the meth pills, stored in fertiliser bags. Two men were in the car and taken into custody.

A separate team later picked up and arrested the other two suspects in a Toyota Altis with Mukdahan-registered licence plates. That car was acting as a lookout for the 2 men caught in the other bust and was intended to drive ahead of the Fortuner full of meth in order to warn of any police checkpoints upcoming.

The four suspects in the bust allegedly confessed to the drug smuggling, explaining that the meth had been snuck in long-tail boats along the Mekong River and into Thailand across the Laos border. They said they had done this same drug run a few times in the past and had delivered similar drug shipments to Thailand’s inner provinces. They were said to have been paid by a Thai man to transport the drugs, receiving 100,000 baht for their smuggling.

Police have been vigilant in apprehending drug shipments, confiscating around 5 million methamphetamine pills in the last 2 months alone.

SOURCE: Bangkok Post