Nongprue police arrested a Laotian gangster who allegedly scammed a local gold shop out of 9 million baht by pawning fake gold.
San Ulthanin, the 43-year-old suspect, is an illegal alien who conspired with several others to repeatedly pawn plated gold necklaces weighing a total of 376 baht before they were caught by the unnamed East Pattaya shop’s owner.
The con artists rotated amongst themselves to sell the fake gold during the past month. On the whole, the criminal caused about 9 million baht in damages to the gold shop.
Unfortunately for the gold merchants, it took them a while to catch on. It began when the suspect first came in posing as a construction contractor who needed cash to pay workers.
He sold a four-baht-weight necklace that the retailer didn’t cut open to check whether it was genuine gold. Soon the man’s friends came in, each pawning necklaces for which they were paid 76,000-120,000 baht. Again, their genuineness was not checked.
It wasn’t until the same gang came in several times selling similar-looking jewelry that the couple got suspicious and broke apart the necklaces, promising to compensate the men if the gold was, in fact, solid all the way through.
It wasn’t, and one member of the gang was captured by police. He initially was charged with residing in Thailand illegally, pending further investigation into the gold scam.
 |
 |
 |
