Exam-cheat suspect helped 73 applicants, police say

Six suspects including Si Sa Ket-based Tuanjai, 45, were arrested along with Bt10 million cash early last week following the discovery of cheating on police entrance exams. Police subsequently arrested Lampang politician Dachai Uchukosonkan, 42, and issued an arrest warrant for Dachai’s aid Wibulsak Saenjak, 29, as well as another unidentified man who procured the gang’s police applicant customers.
A police team led by Pol Lt-Colonel Phum Thongpho seized Tuanjai’s three diaries, six bank books and four cell phones in Si Sa Ket. Police found the bank books showed 30 transactions of Bt50,000 and Bt100,000 deposits amounting to Bt10 million, suspected to be the applicants’ payments to the gang.
The three diaries also yielded a 100-item list of applicant names, ID card numbers, payment details and exam sites. The list included several kinds of civil servant entrance exams, especially the police entrance exam in 2009, to which the gang sent 53 applicants, and the police entrance exam in 2011, to which the gang sent 20 applicants. Each applicant had to pay the gang around Bt300,000-Bt500,000 and all of the applicants were assisted to pass the tests by cheating. This year, according to the diaries, the gang sent 34 applicants, but they were busted.
Another police team yesterday apprehended suspected gang accomplice Chatchawal Sornchaiphum, 28, who worked at the Royal Thai Air Force’s Quartermaster Directorate, Nakhon Ratchasima deputy police chief Pol Colonel Wachirawit Kritrittisak said. He went on to say that 21 applicants found to be wearing vibrating devices to receive exam answers, confessed to cheating and implicated Chatchawal as the person who invited them to cheat. He said the investigation didn’t find evidence to confirm that the police exam papers had been leaked.
Police education commander Pol Lt-General Reungsak Jarit-ek said his office was working on a new round of entrance exams, to be finished within three months, to recruit 10,000 policemen from 280,000 applicants. They would be divided into 14 zones for speedy supervision and checking, and the exam would be held on more than one day, he added.
House Committee on Police Affairs chairman Somchai Lhosathapornpipit said the committee would late this month summon the police supervisors in the areas where cheating was discovered, and those organising the police exams, as well as the national police chief to inquire about cheating-prevention measures. He said the committee would probe the case, in which they suspected policemen might be involved.
In Songkhla, where 10 people were arrested for using fake ID cards to take police exams for money, police were gathering evidence for use in arrest warrants to be issued next week. They were investigating the Sri Nakarin district office, but officials insisted the ID cards weren’t issued from there.
In Phitsanulok’s Muang district, former soldier Metha Ong-ard, 37, was presented at a police press conference yesterday at 9am in relation to his alleged crime of duping at least 16 people out of Bt4,877,900 cash in 2010-2011. He is accused of falsely promising to place victims’ children in military positions. The man, who was fired from military service due to police complaints of public fraud and then fled to Lampang, where he was arrested on Friday, was nearly assaulted by the enraged victims.