Pattaya Car Rental Scam

From www.teakdoor.com

http://teakdoor.com/motoring-in-thailand-and-asia/33041-car-scam-in-pattaya.html

Since May of this year until about 1 week ago, a car scam was going on in the Pattaya car rental business. A lady from Bangkok aproched local car rental companies and brokers to rent cars to be rented by companies in Bangkok. The prices the suppliers of cars got were to good to be true, so most of them started to rent out their own cars and all the cars they could rent from other companies and friends and family. Our company was approched by one of the local brokers and we rented 2 of our cars to them.

Last Sunday (02/08/2008), my wife saw a program on Thai TV, stating there was a big car theft going on all over the country. We checked about our cars, but they had disappeared. The broker we rented the cars to has lost a total of 59 cars (own and rented), the rental companies in Pattaya are missing 280 cars.

The police got involved on Wednesday (06/08/2008) and today (08/08/2008) we went to Bangkok to see the current result of the investigation (5 cars recovered at 2nd hand car shops) and heared how we will be notified if one of our cars will be recovered. We already had an untracable phone call from a 2nd hand car dealer in Bangkok to confirm that we really wanted to sell our Vios. A list of stolen cars can be found at westercarrentals[dot]com