Thread: DSI Seizes Cars Stolen From UK

BANGKOK (NNT) - Operation “Titanium” – a coordinated effort by the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) to bust a network that imports stolen luxury cars from the United Kingdom – has so far succeeded in reclaiming 26 stolen vehicles, with nine more yet to be recovered.


The operation was initiated in response to a 2017 request from the British embassy for Thai authorities to track down 35 luxury cars stolen from the UK and illegally imported into Thailand. The DSI accepted the case in 2018.


Justice Minister Somsak Thepsuthin and DSI Director-General Triyarith Temahivong said the 35 vehicles were brought into Thailand between July 2016 and March 2017. All of the cars were imported using forged documents by a sole importing firm that sold all of them to imported auto showrooms run by network companies.


Officials were able to track down 26 of the vehicles whose owners were unaware they were stolen and subsequently relinquished the cars to authorities. The owners are now being treated as witnesses. The owners of the remaining nine vehicles have meanwhile refused to hand them over and will be prosecuted for accepting stolen goods.


Authorities said the showrooms that sold the cars would also be prosecuted if found culpable, as will the importer for declaring falsified import tax records and importing stolen cars. Efforts are currently underway to return the stolen cars to their original owners.

DSI Seizes Cars Stolen From UK

The owners of the remaining nine vehicles have meanwhile refused to hand them over

Just fancy being able to do that.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Just fancy being able to do that.

It could depend on the provisions of Thai law. There used to be a principle of 'market overt' in the UK, abolished there in the nineties, where things bought on the open market could become the buyer's legal property despite having been previously stolen. It also applied in Hong Kong and I have a remnant of a memory about people there who had bought stolen cars in good faith in the open market ending up with good title to them.

Were the cars in the UK owned by Thais that had bought them on a down payment and had good theft insurance, by any chance.


Just how easy is it to genuinely steal a bright green Lamborghini and get it onto a shipping container without being caught.

Just how easy is it to genuinely steal a bright green Lamborghini and get it onto a shipping container without being caught.

if you are a piece of shit albanian scumbag, living illegally in the uk amongst a network of other piece of shit illegal albanian scumbags , then i would say it would be very easy to steal and export a bright green lamborghini.

the chances of being caught are negligible.

the uk police are too busy either donning rainbow badges and publicly declaring their support for trans grotesques and mincing homos or giving cups of tea to climate protesters who have stopped traffic by glueing themselves to busy roads.

Originally Posted by Shutree

It could depend on the provisions of Thai law.

Nah, I rather think it depends on the "importance" of the person refusing.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Nah, I rather think it depends on the "importance" of the person refusing.

I thought that was the Thai law.

Originally Posted by Shutree

I thought that was the Thai law.

Pretty well.

Originally Posted by Edmond

Just how easy is it to genuinely steal a bright green Lamborghini and get it onto a shipping container without being caught.

Lease or hire it, put a couple of grand down and disappear with it before the first payment is due.

Originally Posted by Fondles

The cars I witnessed being shipped from UK to Thailand (I do not know it they were stolen).

They were prepped for flight, fitted with thai numberplates strapped down to a flight pallet and then shipped to the airport and stuck up the arse of a plane.

always thought this seemed dodgy.

Months later met a guy who worked at swampy and the subject of dodgy car imports came up.

He told me about airplanes landind from the UK and parking away from the terminal, passengers ferried in on busses then cars on pallets being unloaded and moved out the back gate of the airport on trucks.

3 of the 4 cars he mentioned matched the cars I saw in the UK being prepped for flight.

The organised theft of UK vehicles is massive, yet the police seem to do very little, only occasionally grabbing a couple of cars and claiming a massive breakthrough. Really, how hard can it be?
My personal view is that each case involves a single victim, none of whom commands any political authority, so the obviously organised crime scheme runs on as it has for decades.
It simply should not be possible to export a vehicle from the UK without it being stuck in a pound for weeks while checks are conducted. Yet it is.
I guess the National Criminal Intelligence Service is too busy hunting down blokes in pubs who express negative opinions about one group or another. I don't know what they do, they must do something, surely?

Only a couple of weeks ago:

Bentley Mulsanne stolen from London discovered almost 5,000 miles away in Pakistan | World News | Sky News.