Police make B180m yaba bust

CHIANG MAI - Police have arrested four hilltribe people and seized 600,000 methamphetamine tablets with a street value of over 180 million baht, national police chief Priewpan Damapong said at a press conference on Friday.

They also seized two pickup trucks and four mobile phones.

The suspects were identified as Samran Saenluang, 47, Pongsapak Ruangkitsuwan, 41, Somyos Laomi, 42, and Nopporn Panasirisomboon, 22, all residents of Chiang Mai.

The suspects face charges of possessing illegal drugs.

They were arrested on Thursday after Chiang Mai police received a tip-off that there would be an attempt  to smuggle a large amount of methamphetamine pills into Chiang Mai’s Phrao district.

Police set up checkpoints in the district. They later stopped two suspicious pickup trucks running toward a checkpoint. They search the first pickup truck, but found nothing.

However they found 600,000 tablets of yaba in the second pickup truck.

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The suspects denied the charges, saying that they had only recently bought the vehicles from a second-hand car dealer and had no knowledge that there was a secret box containing the drugs.

But police learned from intelligence sources that a drug ring had paid the suspects 500,000 baht to smuggle the drugs over the nearby border into Thailand.

Under the plan, the drug would have been initially stashed in Chiang Mai and later transported to clients in Bangkok and its vicinity, according to police.

Share your thoughts

Discussion 1 : 14/09/2012 at 06:33 PM
No floods, 15% export growth, 600,000 yaba pills... Nobody believes the propaganda from this regime.
Discussion 2 : 14/09/2012 at 05:08 PM
I agree with dis 1 and 2. Well its good to catch the little people trafficing the drugs. And that might stop other trafficers from doing it if so many of them are getting caught. However, isn't better and more efficient to catch the big people at the top of the food chain of all these drugs. Do the police ever follow-up on the investigation on who paided them, who was their contact on the border, many times have they done this before and to who they are doing it for. I have never heard of any one big being caught. And these big people can easily hire more trafficers to take the risk.
Discussion 3 : 14/09/2012 at 04:50 PM
And will somebody go aftet those who paid the 500,000 Baht and after the clients in Bangkok? Or does the story end right here?
Discussion 4 : 14/09/2012 at 04:28 PM
These are the minnows, Hill Tribe people with 100's of millions of Baht in drugs, highly unlikely, this is being controlled by someone big who is above the law!

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