Authorities have arrested a Vietnamese man accused of holding a fake Thai ID card and falsifying land documents to sell other people's plots via auction in three northeastern provinces.
Crime Suppression Division (CSD) police apprehended Min Sen Wan at a house in tambon Mak Kheng of Muang district in Udon Thani on Saturday.
The 55-year-old Vietnamese man was wanted under an arrest warrant approved by the Udon Thani Provincial Court on Nov 5 last year for using false documents, giving false information to officials for the issuing of a Thai ID card, and giving false information to officials to record false statements in official documents that caused damage to other people.
The arrest came after CSD police received a complaint from a group of local residents last month that the suspect had colluded with local officials to obtain a Thai ID card to run a land sales and mortgaging business.
They accused him of falsifying contracts to inflate the amount of debt when they mortgaged title deeds as collateral for loans. Other documents were forged to authorise him to sell those plots, the complainants claimed.
The suspect later put the land up for auction, resulting in many land owners to be evicted from their land in Udon Thani, Nong Bua Lam Phu and Nong Khai provinces.
CSD investigators found that the Vietnamese man had used the ID card of a Thai man, identified only as Anusorn, in Nong Khai in 1997 before changing his name to Kittinan Suntharaphirom.
In November last year, he applied for a new ID card at Muang district in Udon Thani, but the registrar found that he had used false documents and filed a complaint, said the CSD investigators.
During questioning, he denied all charges. He was handed over to local officials at the Muang district office in Udon Thani for legal proceedings.