PHUKET: Police in Krabi last night arrested two French men believed to be members of an ATM skimming gang.
The two admitted that they had withdrawn money from ATM machines in Phang Nga and Krabi for two months before they were caught, using cloned cards they bought in Patong.
Adrien Char Baptiste Hemour, 21, and Julien Patrick Alandis, 22, both from Marseilles, were caught in possession of B227,350 in cash and 265 cloned ATM cards, which they said they had bought from a foreigner in Patong.
They were also in possession of six mobile phones, a Toyota Yaris car with Bangkok plates and three bags of marijuana.
The duo told the police that they bought the cards from “a black man” in Patong for 2,000 Euros (about B80,000) and also bought marijuana from a bar worker in the same area.
Moves to arrest them started after a complaint was made to police by a bank in the area about withdrawals in January. As other complaints came in police were able to identify the two from CCTV footage.
Krabi police commissioner Maj Gen Nantadech Yoynuan said that the police have yet to establish the identity of the black man who sold the pair the cloned cards, but believe he may be a member of a known skimmer gang, some of whose members have already been arrested.
Bank staff are working to total up the thefts from depositors who, they say, are mostly from abroad, not from Phuket or surrounding provinces.
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