Crime News

Thailand crime news, breaking reports, investigations, and law enforcement updates—stay informed on drug trafficking, cybercrime, corruption, and public safety developments. Get the latest from The Thaiger, your trusted source for crime news in Thailand.

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  • Guard who shot sword-wielding customer charged with murder

    Guard who shot sword-wielding customer charged with murder

    After intervening in a scuffle between a man and a woman outside a Phuket Town bar, the man grabbed a sword and a security guard shot him once in the chest, killing him. Now the guard is being charged with murder in the incident. The altercation took place in the early hours of Monday morning when a man was fighting…

  • 4 out of 5 charges against Thailand’s Red Bull Heir expire, 1 remains

    4 out of 5 charges against Thailand’s Red Bull Heir expire, 1 remains

    Thailand’s “Red Bull Heir” who killed a police officer in a hit-and-run in 2012 is still wanted 10 years later. Yesterday, the fourth out of the five original charges filed against Vorayuth “Boss” Yoovidya expired. However, the heir is still wanted under one valid charge: “reckless driving causing death.” “Boss” – the grandson of billionaire Red Bull co-founder Chaleo Yoovidhya…

  • Shiitake happened to nearly 2,000 victims in Thailand who lost over 1 million baht in a mushroom farm scam

    Shiitake happened to nearly 2,000 victims in Thailand who lost over 1 million baht in a mushroom farm scam

    Shiitake happened to about 2000 people who invested in a mushroom farm in the Isaan province of Sakhon Nakhon after scammers without good morels said thank you very mush to more than 1 million baht of their cash. The media reported that Turtle Farm in Sakhon Nakhon invited people from all over Thailand to invest and become shareholders in the…

  • Suicidal cop shoots his wife & kills himself in central Thailand

    Suicidal cop shoots his wife & kills himself in central Thailand

    A depressed police officer is believed to have shot and killed his wife before turning the gun on himself yesterday in Noen Maprang district, in central Thailand. The bodies of Police Lieutenant Somsak Taklom and his wife Nongluck were found dead at 9pm by duty officer Pol Lt Col Suparerk Chanmee at Sai Yoi police living quarters, in Noen Maprang…

  • Thai man beset by Black Magic faces jail for stealing holy relic

    Thai man beset by Black Magic faces jail for stealing holy relic

    A Thai druggie obsessed with Black Magic faces five years in jail and a 100,000 baht fine after stealing a holy statue from some military premises. Habitual drug taker Thongchai Saengtrakarn was arrested yesterday after stealing the holy statute from the entrance of the Defence Technology Institute in Nontha Buri province near Bangkok on Thursday, July 28. The 38 year…

  • Son shoots mother after drunken row in luxury Bangkok condo

    Son shoots mother after drunken row in luxury Bangkok condo

    In a scene that had all the hallmarks of a Greek tragedy, a 41-year-old businessman shot and killed his 65 year old mother and threatened to murder his wife and two children after a drunken row broke out in a luxury condominium in Bangkok. Kelvin Shuo Gao, an Australian citizen, shot his Chinese mother Xing Liu twice to the body…

  • Army man rents 12 luxury cars, then sells them to used car dealers

    Army man rents 12 luxury cars, then sells them to used car dealers

    A former army sergeant came up with a creative – and illegal – way to pay off some debt. He allegedly rented 12 luxury cars and then forged paperwork to sell the borrowed vehicle to car dealers. The sergeant has now been arrested by the Crime Suppression Division (CSD) yesterday and faces charges of fraud, counterfeiting, and using counterfeit official…

  • Police arrest Australian man allegedly involved in Pattaya’s Harley Davidson shooting

    Police arrest Australian man allegedly involved in Pattaya’s Harley Davidson shooting

    Police have arrested an Australian man who is a suspect in a shooting at a Pattaya Harley Davidson motorcycle shop, which happened back in April. Nongprue police arrested the man yesterday when he was trying to cross a border in Sa Kaeo province. The man is 61 year old Anthony George Leorga. In the shooting, four suspects had allegedly fired…

  • Scam gang tricks child, steals over a million baht from his father

    Scam gang tricks child, steals over a million baht from his father

    A man in South Thailand is the latest victim of the country’s call centre scam pests. A call centre scam gang tricked the man’s son into transferring 1,206,000 baht to the gang from his father’s bank account from July 7-25. The 49 year old man, ‘A’, and his 10 year old son live in the province of Nakhon Sri Thammarat.…

  • British man injured in assault by Thai taxi driver, or was it a fence?

    British man injured in assault by Thai taxi driver, or was it a fence?

    What looked to be another blight on Thailand’s treatment of foreigners ended up instead as a blight on foreigners in Thailand as a British man who claimed to have been attacked by a taxi driver in Chiang Mai confessed that he had actually injured himself on a fence. The man suffered cuts in the palm of his hand and on…

  • Pattaya transgender foundation concerned about stereotypes following thefts

    Pattaya transgender foundation concerned about stereotypes following thefts

    A foundation in Pattaya is concerned about stereotypes against transgender people. This news follows a series of thefts against Indian tourists this year, many by transgender people. Most of the thefts involve transgender people snatching gold necklaces off tourists’ necks. However, there was also an incident this week when an Indian tourist said a transgender person stole his wallet. One…

  • Drunk Russian man smashes glass door on Pattaya gogo bar

    Drunk Russian man smashes glass door on Pattaya gogo bar

    After not being able to pay his tab in a Pattaya gogo bar, a drunk Russian tourist went on a rampage, smashing the bar’s glass door and punching a security guard. The incident took place at Dolls, a girlie bar on Pattaya Walking Street late last night involving a 25 year old Russian man identified only as Viago. Pattaya police…

  • 10 million baht kidnapping of businessman by Chinese crooks is comedy of errors

    10 million baht kidnapping of businessman by Chinese crooks is comedy of errors

    The botched 10 million baht kidnapping of a Vanuatu businessman by three Chinese gangsters had the hallmarks of a blockbuster comedy movie stamped all over it. The hostage and ransom demand situation may not have been funny to the businessman and his girlfriend but the situation was pure slapstick and would not look out of place on the silver screen.…

  • Children falsely accuse village drunk of murdering 6 year old in central Thailand

    Children falsely accuse village drunk of murdering 6 year old in central Thailand

    Yesterday evening, a 6 year old boy drowned in a lake in Lopburi province in central Thailand. The boy’s 7 year old brother and 5 year old friend told police that an alcoholic man who lives nearby strangled the child and held his body under the water until he died. However, the police’s investigation reveals that the children’s accusation is…

  • Thieves rob French millionaire’s house at gunpoint in northeast Thailand

    Thieves rob French millionaire’s house at gunpoint in northeast Thailand

    Four thieves armed with guns and knives broke into a French millionaire’s house in the northeastern province of Chaiyaphum in the early hours of Monday morning and robbed millions of baht’s worth of cash and assets. The single-story home in the Noen Sa-nga district is jointly owned by 39 year old Waritsara Poobkhonthot and her French husband Stephane Greco, the…

  • Wanted Taiwanese call centre scammer extradited from Albania to Thailand

    Wanted Taiwanese call centre scammer extradited from Albania to Thailand

    A Taiwanese man wanted for allegedly scamming Thai victims from a call centre operation in Dubai arrived at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport yesterday afternoon to face Thailand’s justice system after being arrested in Albania in September. Tzu Yuan Kuo – or “Ayen” – was the “deputy leader” of a call centre gang scamming victims in Thailand, Japan and Malaysia from Dubai…

  • A debt-ridden Thai woman seeks help after spiky durian assault

    A debt-ridden Thai woman seeks help after spiky durian assault

    A Thai woman in the northern province of Lamphun has asked for media help after she was assaulted with some durian fruit because of a loan shark debt. The woman, Duangduen, revealed she borrowed about 20,000 baht from a money lender to open a shop with a friend last year. But things spiraled out of control and the interest repayment…

  • Businessman rejects rumours of arrest over marijuana seizure at Bangkok airport

    Businessman rejects rumours of arrest over marijuana seizure at Bangkok airport

    A businessman is rejecting rumours that he was arrested after customs seized his marijuana products at a Bangkok airport. Customs at Suvarnabhumi airport seized 5.3 kilograms of illegally imported marijuana flowers and hemp products from him earlier this week. He had allegedly smuggled the products in from the US. The suspect, who many Thais call ‘Tom Kreuasophon,’ is known by…

  • Thai Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul forced to defend his ‘cannabis’ policy

    Thai Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul forced to defend his ‘cannabis’ policy

    Thailand’s Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul is being backed into a corner by physicians, hundreds of doctors, foundations, universities, and religious groups over his botched decriminalisation of cannabis policy. Anutin is refusing to back down from the introduction of new laws that decriminalised cannabis on June 6, despite mounting calls for the policy to be suspended amid confusion, misinterpretation, and…

  • Nine alleged pedophiles arrested in Northern Thailand

    Nine alleged pedophiles arrested in Northern Thailand

    Police yesterday arrested nine alleged pedophile men for having sex with underage girls in Kalasin province. The arrests were part of a bigger sex trafficking and child sexual exploitation operation in Kalasin province, in Northern Thailand. Police from the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Division (ATPD) apprehended the suspects in the northeastern province yesterday. The ATPD reported that one of the suspects…

  • Chinese kingpin of transnational call centre gang arrested at Bangkok airport

    Chinese kingpin of transnational call centre gang arrested at Bangkok airport

    A Chinese man wanted for trafficking Chinese people across borders to work in call centre gangs in Laos and Cambodia was arrested at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok on Saturday. Chief of Police Suwat Chaengyordsook received a call on Friday, July 22, warning him that a Chinese fugitive wanted on an Interpol ‘Red Notice’ would be travelling to Suvarnabhumi Airport in…

  • Pathum Thani Police nab 17 teen gang members after explosions

    Pathum Thani Police nab 17 teen gang members after explosions

    Gang violence in the Greater Bangkok province of Pathum Thani has escalated with 17 teenagers being arrested by police after throwing small bombs at each other. Thai news media reported that in the province to the north of Bangkok, on Soi Thammasuthee 23, Moo 5, in Muang district, explosions were heard three separate times related to gang wars. The first…

  • Armed robber makes off with 160,000 baht from Phuket Tesco

    Armed robber makes off with 160,000 baht from Phuket Tesco

    Bank robberies are generally violent affairs, with lots of drama, some shots fired, and an injury or death. But this wasn’t the case when a stick-up occurred yesterday afternoon at a Tesco Lotus department store in Phuket. The cheeky armed robber wandered into the store in the Rawai area of Muang district shortly before 1pm and casually made off with…

  • Chinese man allegedly murders Thai wife for 70 million baht business

    Chinese man allegedly murders Thai wife for 70 million baht business

    A Chinese man was arrested last week in the central province of Pathum Thani for allegedly murdering his Thai wife and covering it up. The man, Guang Chan, was arrested for the alleged murder and conspiracy to cover up her death on July 18. The 48 year old took his wife, Parawee, to a hospital last month and told staff…

  • Thai police seize meth with a street value of 600 million baht

    Thai police seize meth with a street value of 600 million baht

    The Narcotic Suppression Bureau (NSB) swooped on a drug cartel in the early hours of Saturday morning in Songkhla province and confiscated crystal methamphetamine with a street value of 600 million baht. The NSB impounded 631 kilograms of crystal meth, arrested seven suspects, and confiscated three cars and a plot of land with a house suspected of being used for…

  • Machete-wielding, drug-crazed son shot dead by father

    Machete-wielding, drug-crazed son shot dead by father

    A father yesterday shot his drug-crazed son dead as he tried to attack him with a machete. Ruangrit Phromthong used a shotgun to kill his son, Adisak, high on methamphetamine, as he wielded a 1.2 metres long knife in front of his face at about 5.45pm on Sunday in front of a house in Moo 11 village of tambon Si…

  • Bangkok police shoot out tyres in dramatic car chase

    Bangkok police shoot out tyres in dramatic car chase

    A video is going viral of Bangkok police officers shooting out the tyres of a fleeing car that did a runner at a checkpoint in Ekkamai. The incident took place last night when Thong Lor police attempted to stop a red Mitsubishi Mirage at a checkpoint, but the driver refused and tried to speed off. At around 8pm yesterday, officers…

  • Phuket gold necklace thief arrested, Pattaya thefts still unsolved

    Phuket gold necklace thief arrested, Pattaya thefts still unsolved

    After an apparent rise in gold necklace snatching crime, police in Phuket have managed to nab one man accused of grabbing a necklace from a woman on her motorbike a few days ago. The necklace that was grabbed as the woman rode her motorbike was gold with a pendant attached and is valued at about 35,000. The Deputy Inspector-General of…

  • Pattaya’s egg thief scrambles yet again

    Pattaya’s egg thief scrambles yet again

    The case of the Pattaya egg thief still hasn’t been cracked, and the thief has scrambled yet again. Another two egg merchants have been duped by the new Pattaya egg thief wreaking havoc around Chon Buri’s Bang Lamung district. One of the victims, 31 year old Wichitra, told The Pattaya News on July 21 that a thief had stolen 10 packs…

  • Another Indian tourist reported gold necklace stolen in Pattaya

    Another Indian tourist reported gold necklace stolen in Pattaya

    In what has become an all-too-familiar story, Pattaya Police announced that an Indian tourist reported that a transgender woman stole his 30,000 baht gold necklace. The theft is the latest in a rash of gold necklace thefts being reported by Indian tourists in Pattaya, and occasionally Phuket. The victim this time was a 43 year old Indian man who says…