Pickpocket gang members show police how they do it: One of the women puts a
bag on her lap, then reaches under it to pick the wallet while the other
members distract the victim.
Theerarak Suthathiwong
A family-based gang of pickpockets arrested several times
before have again been caught lifting the wallet of a foreign tourist.
Police were called to Chaimongkol Temple in South Pattaya
Dec. 18 to take the report of 63-year-old Manfred Bieber. He said he’d taken
a baht bus from Pratamnak Road to the temple. Before he arrived, a group of
six women got on the taxi at the VC Hotel. One started chatting with him
and, after they got off the truck, he realized his wallet was gone.
He told police officers he immediately suspected the
women, who had jumped on another taxi.
Police fanned out and quickly found the suspected thieves
at the corner of Soi 6 and Second Road. Police searched the women and found
Bieber’s black wallet - containing 2,070 baht, 200 euros and other documents
- on a 14-year-old suspect.
Arrested were Tuanjai Chotang, 26, Wanpen Chotang, 23,
Buatip Chotang, 20, Phinpit Khumsaneg, 24, and Kanya Chalermklin, 29, and
the unnamed 14-year-old.
The Chotang family are hardly strangers to the Pattaya
Police. Officers said several members had been arrested and gone to court
several times before.
Wanpen admitted to stealing Bieber’s wallet by using an
accomplice to distract him and the teen girl to hold the money. She told
officers the family had previously worked at a family pickpocket gang on
Thepprasit Soi 7 in Jomtien Beach, but relocated to the Naklua Market area
after a dispute with a rival gang.
Members
of the Chotang family are hardly strangers to Pattaya Police, as they have
been arrested several times before. Perhaps it’s time for a stiffer
sentence.
