Thai police have arrested a gang of four led by a self-promoting influencer for allegedly stealing over 50 vehicles from rental firms and smuggling them out of the country.
The suspected mastermind was identified as Patarajarin Chanakham, 27. His three female accomplices were identified as Mananchaya Chanput, 36, Pornpan Pongpan, 37, and Nawarat Tha-ai, 42, senior highway police officers told a press conference on Thursday.
According to the police, Mr Patarajarin had won a business project award while he was a university student. He subsequently began promoting himself on social media, taking photos with well-known influencers and showing off his wealth and business projects.
Through social media, he invited others to take part in bogus business projects. One invitation attracted the three women as well as an elderly business owner aged over 70.
To set up the car thefts, Mr Patarajarin contacted rental firms and pretended to represent a chicken slaughterhouse in the Lam Phak Chee area of Nong Chok district in Bangkok.
Representatives from car rental firms were brought to the site to see the business and were told that the company needed to rent many brand-new pickup trucks to distribute chicken meat.
The gang then rented brand-new pickups by using the business registration documents of the elderly business owner, who had been invited through social media to join a business partnership.
One of the three women acted as a director of the company. Another woman handled rental contracts and truck acceptance, and the third transferred rental payments via bank branches in advance. Rental contracts were made for a five-year validity.
After the group took delivery of the pickups, another gang still at large disabled the GPS in the vehicles. At that point, the rental firms suspected theft and filed complaints with police. Highway police later found 14 brand-new Toyota Hilux Revo Prerunner pickups near the border with Laos and Myanmar.
The trucks worth a total of about 12 million baht had been stolen from four companies.
Mr Patarajarin was arrested on Tuesday while he was contacting another car rental firm to “rent” 10 more pickups.
Police said the vehicles were likely to have been smuggled out of Thailand as they were found in border areas, and the Toyota pickup model with an elevated chassis was popular in neighbouring countries.
Highway police believed the gang had operated for at least two years and stolen more than 50 vehicles. They said it was the first case they had seen that involved a bogus company being set up to steal cars on such a large scale.
Highway police commander Pol Maj Gen Kongkrit Lertsitthikul leads a press conference about the vehicle-theft ring on Thursday. (Screenshot)