A Pattaya police volunteer from Scotland whose testimony helped send three people to death row is now wanted in Thailand on allegations he sold women into the flesh trade.
Douglas Peter Shoebridge is accused of trafficking East African women into the region in an arrest warrant obtained by the police anti-human trafficking division just months after his turn as star witness led to an Australian, American and Thai being sentenced to die in the kingdom.
Australian ‘Hells Angels’ member, Thai wife sentenced to death for drug smuggling
Shoebridge, 36, is said to possess both UK and Australian citizenship and goes by the nickname “Big Daddy,” according to police.
He and a Tanzanian woman currently in custody stand accused of bringing women into the country and setting them up in lodgings in the capital.
The top anti-trafficking cop who applied for the warrant, Lt. Col. Nalinee Cheawnoi, could not be immediately reached for comment.
Last year, Australian biker Luke Cook, his wife, Kanyarat Wedphitak, and US national Tyler Gerard were convicted of attempting to smuggle a massive load of meth into the country.
As longtime Pattaya hand Andrew Drummond notes on his blog, Shoebridge’s testimony against the trio – given around the time he is accused of trafficking women – was key to winning their convictions in a case that lacked any physical evidence.
Shoebridge testified that they were moving ice in 2015 for the former head of the Sydney Hells Angel chapter, Wayne Schneider. Later that year, Schneider was found buried naked in the jungle just outside Pattaya.
According to Drummond, police in the Aussie state of New South Wales say that Shoebridge is “extremely close” to Antonio Bagnato, the man later convicted of Schneider’s execution-style murder. Evidence may exist linking Shoebridge to that crime as well.
Shoebridge is believed to have left the kingdom late last month.
He reportedly participated in raids on suspected foreign criminals in Pattaya as a police volunteer, including the now-infamous case involving a Russian sex guru and his Belarusian girlfriend, who claimed to have compromising recordings of a Russian oligarch discussing interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
Shoebridge appears in images taken during the raid alongside another Pattaya police volunteer, Thierry Perenon, who was investigated by the DSI for allegedly impersonating one of its officers in attempts to extort money from journalists, diplomats and YouTube personalities.
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