Police use ‘call-centre tactic’ to lure drug suspect
A Crime Suppression Division police officer borrowed a tactic from call-centre scammers on Monday when he pretended to be a bank official to lure a drug suspect to be arrested in Nakhon Pathom.
The CSD officer phoned the suspect, Preeda Lakham, 26, and told him that he had been approved for a state welfare card, and he needed to pick it up at a bank inside a shopping mall in Nakhon Pathom’s Nakhon Chairi district.
Once Preeda turned up at the bank, hiding CSD officers arrested him.
Pol Colonel Phumin Pumphanmuang, commander of CSD Sub-division 5, said Preeda, a resident of Si Sa Ket, was suspected of selling methamphetamine pills to young people in Si Sa Ket’s Khun Han district.
He fled when they tried to arrest him and went to live in Nakhon Pathom. Police did not know his address, so they made the phone call to lure him into their trap.
