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Published on December 15, 2007

The robbery occurred at about 2am at a filling station near Safari World in Bangkok's Klong Sam Wa district.

Former Samco employee Bundit Theungnok, 33, and a volleyball-player with Infantry Region 11, Private Uthit Jansamphao, 22, reportedly confessed.

They said the two men still on the run were Samco operating team chief Wanlop Soisong, 38, and another volleyball-player for Infantry Region 11, Anont Puang-ampai, 22.

Police, armed with arrest warrants for the four, also hunted for Wanlop at locations including his home town Khon Kaen and his wife's home town Kanchanaburi.

At 9.30am police retrieved the two money bags from woods inside the Senaniwet 2 Housing Estate on Soi Sena in Lat Phrao district.

Wanchai sae Eung, 43, told police that three men in a Toyota Tiger pickup truck had hired him and his truck at 6am to transport four bags from the area to a Bangchak filling station at the Watcharapol Intersection.

After unloading the four bags from his truck, the three men got into their Toyota and headed towards Or-ngern market while Wanchai returned to Senaniwet 2.

Wanchai's fellow drivers for hire then discovered the two bags filled with money in the wooded area and informed police.

Earlier, Kannayao police were alerted to the robbery and rushed to the Panya Ram Inthra Housing Estate, where the security van was parked.

Inside the truck, driver Kranchai Ood-amart, 28, and security officer Thavorn Mongkolnam, 29, both handcuffed, were waiting for police. Thavorn was the one who had walked to the housing estate's security guard Meesak Ngam-ngod to ask him to call police.

The two Samco employees told police that after filling an ATM on Phaholyothin Soi 23 with cash they had stopped at a filling station near Safari World to go to the toilet when the truck was hijacked by four men.

While two men followed their van in a car, two masked men forced them to drive to the estate, where they handcuffed them and took off with the Bt17 million, they said.

Suspecting foul play, police interrogated the Samco workers.

Following 10 hours of interrogation Kranchai maintained his innocence while Thavorn confessed to police that he had collaborated with the robbers. He said he knew Bundit and Wanlop, both of whom had asked him to signal which day he would use which van to transport money and to remain where he was when the robbery occurred.

He said he was not in desperate need of money but thought this would be easy because police had never been able to arrest anyone for Samco money-truck robberies.

Police at 4.30pm brought Uthit, who was arrested near where the money was found, to re-enact the crime, in which he drove a Hyundai car behind the money truck to the filling station, held Kranchai at gunpoint, moved some money to the car, dropped six bags of money at Senaniwet 2, and forced the staffers onto the Panya Ram Inthra Housing Estate.

Earlier at 1pm police found a Hyundai car allegedly used in the robbery at Seri Apartments on Lat Phrao Soi 107 in Wang Thong Lang district. Inside were a fake gun, two ski caps, a wallet with papers belonging to Uthit Jansamphao and some documents about Samco's currency-transport service.

A van of the same firm was robbed on November 29 in front of a Siam Commercial Bank branch in Lat Krabang district. The thieves escaped with Bt22.8 million, and no arrest has been made so far in that case.

Police could not confirm if this robbery had been carried out by the gang that did the earlier job but suspect that nearly all ambushes of Samco vans involve insiders, deputy National Police chief General Wongkot Maneerin said.

Samco manager Songpol Seyyongkha insisted that his company had a tight security system for currency transportation.

He said he did not know if the two van staff were involved, but they had broken security protocol by stopping for a toilet break at a place not designated by the company.

All of Samco's 5,000 employees were subjected to criminal background checks and had been declared clean, he said.

The firm plans to adopt advanced technology that would automatically destroy money to prevent robbers from getting their hands on any, he added.

Third hit for Samco

At least three Samco armoured vans have been robbed in Bangkok this year:

June 12: Two gunmen rob a Samco currency-transport vehicle in front of the Bank of Ayudhya's Rama IX branch in Suan Luang district and get away with Bt3.5 million in cash. No arrest has been made.

November 29: A gang steals Bt22.8 million cash from a Samco truck in front of the Siam Commercial Bank's King Mongkut Institute of Technology Lat Krabang branch, wounding a policeman during a gunfight.

December 14: Two masked men force two Samco employees at gunpoint to drive from a gas station in the Phaholyothin area to a location on Panya-Ram Indra road before emptying their van of

Bt17 million cash.

The Nation