Trio questioned over involvement in fake statue scam

VEAL Veng district police in Pursat province questioned three men on Thursday who were arrested the day before in Thma Da commune’s Sangkum Thmey village over their alleged involvement in a fake statue scam.

District police chief Theang Leng said the suspects are a 51-year-old man from Kampong Cham province and two others, aged 48 and 39 years old, from Prey Veng province.

“As of today [Thursday], we have received three complaints saying the suspects had deceived many people,” Leng said, confirming that the trio were still detained at the district police headquarters.

Before the arrest, he said two of the men met a villager and told him that they were ancient artefact dealers. They exchanged phone numbers.

On Wednesday, the third suspect posed as an ancient artefact salesman and offered to sell the villager an “ancient” statue of a sacred elephant. He immediately contacted the duo, who later arrived by car to inspect the statue.

Leng said that after briefly assessing the statue, the duo told the villager that it was very valuable, and that they had been searching for it for a long time. The “salesman” demanded $16,000 for it.

The duo handed $7,000 in counterfeit bills to the “salesman”, as they informed the villager that the statue could be resold for $100,000.

They promised to pay the villager back $10,000 later if he would chip in some money for the purchase.

The victim gave 3,000,000 riel ($750) to the “salesman”, who agreed to give him the statue and then took off. The duo also drove away.

Leng said that on the evening of the same day, the villager tried to reach the duo, but that they had turned off their phones.

After recounting the story to his family, the villager realised that he had been scammed. Remembering the car plate number, the villager and his family began to search for the two.

At about 8pm on the same day, Leng said, the car was found parked at a guesthouse named Serei Sokha, in Thma Da commune’s Ekapheap village in Veal Veng district. They called the police, who came and detained all three suspects.

At the scene, the police found and confiscated three walkietalkies, $7,000 in counterfeit bills, 40,000 riel and three fragments of metal statues.

Leng said three press IDs and one police card were found on the trio, but he could not confirm whether they were journalists or police officers, saying the case “is still under investigation”.