Thai raid on forgery gang uncovers dismembered body of foreigner with ‘blonde hair’ in freezer
Passport forgery suspects charged with hiding body
Thai police on Saturday said they will charge three foreign members of a suspected passport forgery gang with concealing a dead body after a raid on a Bangkok compound discovered the dismembered remains of a man in a freezer.
Thai police raided the compound late on Friday and arrested three men. One police officer was shot during the raid but remains in a stable condition, Sathien Witanamala, police deputy commander of the Phrakanong precinct in central Bangkok, said.
“An investigation of the compound revealed a dismembered body of a foreign man hidden in plastic bags in a freezer,” he said.
Police also found hundreds of forged passports at the Phrakanong compound. Sathien described the three arrested men as English-speaking foreigners but said police did not know their nationalities as they had been travelling on forged U.S. and British passports.
(The three suspects have been identified as Aaron Thomas Gabel, 33, and James Douglas Eger, 66, both American nationals, and Peter Andrew Colter, 56, of Britain. - according to the Bangkok Post article)
With a high number of visitors every year, Thailand has a booming black market for fake identity documents with authorities struggling to track the thousands of lost or stolen passports each year.
Passports are known to be sold on to drug traffickers while others are suspected to have ended up in the hands of Islamist militants.
(Pol Maj Gen Surachet Hakphan, commander of the Tourist Police Division, said the suspects were believed to be members of a major fake passport gang, with the Briton believed to be the gang leader. He said they had been in Thailand for about eight years and travelled in and out of the country frequently, using both real and fake passports. Police are now tracing the suspects' mobile phone use. They have also searched two more houses linked to the suspects in the On Nut area but found nothing illegal, he added.)
see also (from July 2016) How one master forger oversaw vast counterfeit passport network – before Thai police busted him
and Fall of a forger: 'The Doctor' behind the Thai passport trade
Nine men have been arrested, returning the spotlight to Thailand’s key role as a global hub for fake passports, a shadowy industry dominated by highly skilled Iranians and Pakistanis serving customers from South Asia, the Middle East and further afield.
For years detectives had hunted The Doctor, a name revered among Bangkok’s criminal underworld for producing the most sophisticated forged travel documents on the market for just US$2,000-US$3,000.
But Hamid Reza Jafary, 48, evaded arrest, cocooned from the law by a network of five trusted Pakistani lieutenants and a low-key lifestyle that belied the fortune spun from his unique skill.
His luck ran out earlier this year when military intelligence officers traced a call by the hyper-vigilant forger to a pizza company.
Police swiftly raided an unassuming address in the Bangkok suburbs where they found The Doctor – a soubriquet drawn from his past as a nurse in Iran.
Passport forgery suspects charged with hiding body
Thai police on Saturday said they will charge three foreign members of a suspected passport forgery gang with concealing a dead body after a raid on a Bangkok compound discovered the dismembered remains of a man in a freezer.
Thai police raided the compound late on Friday and arrested three men. One police officer was shot during the raid but remains in a stable condition, Sathien Witanamala, police deputy commander of the Phrakanong precinct in central Bangkok, said.
“An investigation of the compound revealed a dismembered body of a foreign man hidden in plastic bags in a freezer,” he said.
Police also found hundreds of forged passports at the Phrakanong compound. Sathien described the three arrested men as English-speaking foreigners but said police did not know their nationalities as they had been travelling on forged U.S. and British passports.
(The three suspects have been identified as Aaron Thomas Gabel, 33, and James Douglas Eger, 66, both American nationals, and Peter Andrew Colter, 56, of Britain. - according to the Bangkok Post article)
With a high number of visitors every year, Thailand has a booming black market for fake identity documents with authorities struggling to track the thousands of lost or stolen passports each year.
Passports are known to be sold on to drug traffickers while others are suspected to have ended up in the hands of Islamist militants.
(Pol Maj Gen Surachet Hakphan, commander of the Tourist Police Division, said the suspects were believed to be members of a major fake passport gang, with the Briton believed to be the gang leader. He said they had been in Thailand for about eight years and travelled in and out of the country frequently, using both real and fake passports. Police are now tracing the suspects' mobile phone use. They have also searched two more houses linked to the suspects in the On Nut area but found nothing illegal, he added.)
see also (from July 2016) How one master forger oversaw vast counterfeit passport network – before Thai police busted him
and Fall of a forger: 'The Doctor' behind the Thai passport trade
Nine men have been arrested, returning the spotlight to Thailand’s key role as a global hub for fake passports, a shadowy industry dominated by highly skilled Iranians and Pakistanis serving customers from South Asia, the Middle East and further afield.
For years detectives had hunted The Doctor, a name revered among Bangkok’s criminal underworld for producing the most sophisticated forged travel documents on the market for just US$2,000-US$3,000.
But Hamid Reza Jafary, 48, evaded arrest, cocooned from the law by a network of five trusted Pakistani lieutenants and a low-key lifestyle that belied the fortune spun from his unique skill.
His luck ran out earlier this year when military intelligence officers traced a call by the hyper-vigilant forger to a pizza company.
Police swiftly raided an unassuming address in the Bangkok suburbs where they found The Doctor – a soubriquet drawn from his past as a nurse in Iran.
