News Forum - 63 million baht in stolen donations returned to revered abbot

[Thaiger]

Three people, including a temple caretaker, were arrested for allegedly embezzling around 63 million baht donations from a Buddhist temple in the central province Nakhon Sawan. The Bangkok Post reports that the cash has been returned to Wat Huai Duan and police gathered for a formal handover of the more than 63 million baht in cash to the highly respected abbot, 100 year old Phra Ratchamongkhol Watcharacharn. Police opened an investigation back in late October after receiving a complaint that the donations intended for the temple development, ceremonies, and healthcare for the elderly monk were being embezzled. The abbot, also […]

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[Dedinbed]

50 minutes ago, Thaiger said:

Three people, including a temple caretaker, were arrested for allegedly embezzling around 63 million baht donations from a Buddhist temple in the central province Nakhon Sawan

Blimey , sounds like the caretaker took care of the money alright ..

[JohninDublin]

I love the way that the RTP never miss a photo-op to have themselves pictured with the loot.

It reminds me similar pics taken around the world when the photo-op involves a drugs haul, and the customary comment that "The drugs had street value of a squillion dollars". Cops are prone to inflating the value of such hauls.

I recall a few years back seeing such an incident in Pattaya when the RTP recovered the money stolen from an Iranian tourist was robbed for (according to Pattaya Police) 40k THB. The police did the customary lining up of all the banknotes on a table which were a mix of Iranian and Thai notes. It was very easy to count the TH notes which were about 1500 THB. If you then looked on Wiki, you could then work out the value of the Iranian Rials. There were about 400k IRR. I can't remember the exchange rate at the time, but I calculated the total "loot" was a bit over 2k THB. The current exchange rate for the IRR is 1280 to the THB.  

So in the best tradition of publicity seeking crimefighters worldwide the RTP had over-inflated their haul by a factor of 20X. But maybe the real story here was the local media failing to question why several senior cops from the Pattaya Station were glorying their photo-op for such a paltry sum of money.

[Fanta]

If only all thieves were this stupid… stole the lot and didn’t even leave enough to pay the known outgoings thereby ensuring there’d be questions asked sooner or later.

Probably even turned up at the temple in their new pickups with their new mia nois to make a donation because they felt grateful for their “good luck”.  You can’t fix stupid. 

[Jason]

Caught and donations returned....

[Pinetree]

2 hours ago, Fanta said:

If only all thieves were this stupid

The Monks are the real thieves.