Wanted: Bank Robber in Thailand

I was perusing Pink Tentacle this morning and I found an interesting item.

Seems a bank robbery took place in the Ladprao branch of the Government Savings Bank (GSB) in Bangkok last week. An unidentified thief absconded with 200,000 Baht (according to the conversion chart of Bank Austria, that’s about 3,952.57 Euros, or 5,640.32 Dollars, which wouldn’t be enough for me to want to rob a bank, but that’s another story altogether).

Now, I can’t really tell you exactly how the robbery took place (see for yourself), but I can imagine that it was very arresting (excuse the pun) for the other bank customers. It’s not every day that you get to be involved in a bona fide bank robbery, especially when you weren’t expecting it (but then again, who in the world would? One generally doesn’t wake up in the morning with the intention of being witness to a riveting bank robbery, does one?).

At any rate, and to continue my story; unfortunately for the bank robber and fortunately for the police, there were eyewitnesses. Fortunately for the bank robber and unfortunately for the police, he was wearing a motorcycle helmet at the time of the robbery.

The witnesses duly reported what they saw and the Royal Thai Police have released a sketch to aid in his capture.

Admittedly, it may be difficult to identify the culprit from this sketch, but at least they’re following all the leads, bless their little hearts.

I guess we can’t say the same for the Austrian Police, who evidently didn’t do their best for 10 year old Natascha Kampusch, who was kidnapped in 1998 and wasn’t heard of again until her escape in 2006. According to press, reports containing concrete suspicions about Wolfgang Priklopil (her kidnapper) remained unread and her whereabouts unknown until she took advantage of the moment one fine day and saved herself (if you want something done right, then do it yourself).

Well, it just goes to show you - the (Austrian) police is indeed your friend and helper (but only if you’re a criminal).

Thailand bank robber natascha kampusch austrian police kidnapping wolfgang priklopil