An Iranian man has been arrested in Bangkok for luring an unknowing Japanese man into smuggling a bag of clothes laced with crystal meth from Thailand to Shanghai — with a promise of a free three-country vacation.
On Monday, the Immigration Bureau held a press conference to address the arrest and, what appears to be, a new kind of drug smuggling scheme.
The scam began when the unidentified Japanese man said he found a Japanese travel website that offered free getaways to Bangkok, Shanghai, and Frankfurt — complete with over THB200,000 (about US$6,000) of spending money, according to a report by the Immigration Bureau.
(Quick Coconuts how-to-spot-a-scam tip: If a deal seems too good to be true, it most likely is.)
When he arrived in Bangkok last Wednesday, he was greeted by 43-year-old Mohamad Ali Ezazi, an Iranian national who gave him a mysterious piece of luggage that he was supposed to take with him on his next trip to Shanghai.
Suddenly suspicious, the Japanese man opened the bag to find clothes that felt heavier than usual. Not knowing how to proceed, he decided to contact the Japanese Embassy in Bangkok for help.
At the conference, police said the clothes have been coated with crystal meth “ice”. An additional six bags of crystal meth were also found hidden and sealed inside the wall of the luggage, adding up to 2.2 kilograms in total.
“It’s a never-seen-before method, luring tourists to traffic drugs out of the country,” the deputy chief of Thailand’s immigration Bureau, Itthipol Itthisarnronnachai, told AFP.
The bureau ended up using the Japanese tourist to help them arrest the scammer by pretending to be sick and telling Ezazi that he had to cancel the rest of his trip.
When Ezazi met up with the tourist on Friday to retrieve the luggage, he was arrested by the police.
When police searched his condominium in Phatthanakan Soi 42 in Bangkok’s Suan Luang district, they found two more pieces of luggage, which combined contained an additional 1.4 kilograms of meth inside.
Upon arrest, Ezazi confessed to the scheme, claiming that he was working with another unidentified Iranian friend and a whole network in Japan to trick Japanese travelers into smuggle ice for them.
This scam appears to have been going on for quite some time now.
Ezazi is facing charges for possession of a category one drug with the intent to distribute.
Police are continuing their investigation with the help of Japanese authorities.
