Foreigner Arrested For Ripping Off Rental Bikes

October 11, 2012

A man with a fake Norwegian passport was arrested on charges of renting motorbikes from Pattaya shops and never returning them. Police assumed the man had sold the rental bikes for cash. He was confirmed as the thief by motorbike rental owners who never got their motorbikes back.

PATTAYA – October 11, 2012 [PDN]; at 12 a.m., a report of a foreigner who had been found stealing rental motorbikes was received by Pol. Sub. Lt. Jakkrit Jandakham, investigation officer, Pattaya police station, Chonburi province. He rushed to the scene with a police team.

Waiting for the police was the owner of motorbike-for-rent shop in central east Pattaya, who had finally caught a tourist who had been renting motorbikes from different shops but had never returned them.

The officers restrained the suspect and examined his passport. The man’s passport identified him as Mr. Alex Hoge, age 40, nationality Norwegian, but officers found that it was a fake passport.

When questioned by police, the suspect denied that he had sold the motorbikes after he had rented them. But police suspected that the man had been selling the rented motorbikes to individuals or in the open markets.

Police detectives investigated further, and talked to other owners of motorbike-for-rent shops victimized by the foreigner. The group of owners told police that the man always chose the Honda PCX motorbikes to rent, which are very popular models nowadays. But when the rental contracts expired, the man did not return the motorbikes.

The owners assumed the foreign thief who had rented the Honda PCX motorbikes was the same person, because he had the same appearance, and he also used the same telephone number as the suspect who was arrested.

After the foreigner’s arrest, phone calls were made to other owners of motorbike-for-rent shops, to come and identify the suspect. They all confirmed that the suspect was the man who had rented their motorbikes and never returned them.