Fake police & army: Watch out

Grilled chicken seller in Ratchaburi puts on fake army captain uniform and starts collecting inspection fees from local radio stations & for 6 years fake police colonel travels around southern Thailand ripping off temples with fake merit-making ceremonies.

Police and soldiers: Fake or real?

Over the past year, there have been many reports of people dressed up as military or police officers and using the power that comes with such a uniform to extort money out of people or break the law in some way.

Sometimes, it is not clear whether they are fake police, real police or real off-duty police, which seems to have been the case in the notorious Thonglor police station music copyright scam (see here) and tourist shakedowns (see here and here).

Many cases in the past simply never seem to be resolved as being either real or fake, such as the lumber yard in Kanchanburi which said they bought the right to cut the trees down in a farmer's orchard from an alleged army colonel (see here) or sometimes all too real, as the rogue soldier Lt Gen Poramet Pomnak, found to be beating up Loei villagers on behalf of a local gold mine shortly before the coup of 2014 (See here).

All the equipment needed to pass yourself off as a police officer is available cheap for a couple of hundred baht (See here).

This week, two rather strange cases have emerged within a day of each other, a former chicken seller turned fake army captain community radio inspector and a fake police colonel faking acts of religious merit-making and then running away with the cash.

CRIME

Fake police & army officers: Watch out

Bogus police colonel who preyed on temples caught

A man claiming to be a police colonel has been arrested in Songkhla for swindling money from temples in southern Thailand. Pramot Maneeroj, 60, wore a police uniform with the rank of a police colonel, armed with a pistol and twelve bullets, when police stopped his car in Hat Yai on Wednesday.

The suspect allegedly swindled money from four temples in Songkhla, one temple in Surat Thani, one temple in Krabi and two temples in Chumphon between 2009 and 2014. He was wanted on nine arrest warrants for swindling, wearing a police uniform, theft and illegal possession of firearms.

Preying on abbots and monks, he claimed to be a senior police officer from Surat Thani province. The suspect had offered to host krathin robe-giving and pha pa religious ceremonies and asked temples to advance money to him to prepare the events. After the money was handed over, he fled.

Read full story here

Ex-street vendor caught impersonating soldier

A former grilled-chicken vendor, Prathinthip Sudprasert, 26, of Ratchaburi has been arrested for impersonating an army captain to collect bogus fees from community radio stations in Ratchaburi.

Prathinthip Sudprasert, 26, used to earn a living by selling grilled chickens in Ratchaburi but after moving to live with a relative at a military flat in Bangkok, she came up with an idea to make some quick cash to feed her two children by impersonating a military officer.

She tricked radio stations into paying her 1,000 baht each for inspection fees. The woman carried a fake army identification card, bearing the name of Capt Kornsiri Jaritcharoen and claimed that a so-called "Directorate of Joint Communications" sent her to inspect radio frequencies and transmitters. Checks found the name she was using was not really in the military.

Read full story here

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