KUALA LUMPUR: Police are hot on the trail of two ringleaders of the Thomas Gang notorious since early last year for theft of luxury vehicles, including cars from Singapore.
Sentul district police chief ACP Ahmad Sukarno Mohd Zahari said the local men, aged 29 and 35, known as Thomas, 25, and Samuel, 35, were suspected to be the masterminds of the gang.
According to him, the operation to track down the two men was triggered after police managed to arrest six henchmen of the suspects through three raids around Kuala Lumpur and Puchong, Selangor.
“The six men aged 30 to 56 were arrested on June 28 and we managed to seize four cars, two remote control devices and some vehicle ownership documents.
“Our investigation found that this group is targeting luxury cars such as Toyota Vellfire and BMW as well as scrap cars (cars deregistered after COE or certificate of entitlement lapsed and resold cheaper in Malaysia) from Singapore.
“The suspects will steal (a car) and change the chassis and engine number with information obtained from an insurance company before being sold on the website cheaper than the market price, which ranges between RM20,000 to RM90,000,” he said at the Sentul district police headquarters here today.
Ahmad Sukarno said the gang also sold cloned (scrap) vehicles from Singapore and used the chassis number of cars registered as a total write-off.
He said four cases of vehicle theft reported around Kuala Lumpur and Perak were resolved with the arrest of the six men.
“Five of the six suspects were released on police bail and made prosecution witnesses while the other was handed over to the Ipoh district police headquarters for investigation there. All of them have no previous criminal records,” he said.
The case is being investigated under Section 379A of the Penal Code.
Meanwhile, in a separate case, three men aged 19 to 21 were arrested as suspects in a robbery case at an apartment in Kepong here on Wednesday.
Ahmad Sukarno said the syndicate has also been active since the beginning of this year for snatch theft using motorcycles to prey on elderly motorcyclists and pillion riders carrying or placing handbags in baskets.
“Two of the suspects have past criminal records while the other one is clean,” he said.
He said with the arrests, four cases of snatch theft around Kuala Lumpur and one case of robbery reported in Sri Muda, Shah Alam were resolved.
The cases are investigated under Section 394 of the Penal Code. -Bernama