Mr. Harkins stated that he is retired and lives in Soi Khatalo and recently bought a motorbike to use as transport. On that day he drove to see some friends at a bar located in the Jomtien Complex area so parked it near a security box at the entrance and locked it properly. About 1 hour passed by; he noticed that the space where he parked the bike was empty so walked out to look and found it gone.

The police radioed out to make a search for this bike but had no luck. Mr. Harkins is very surprised at how fast these crooks can steal especially from in front of a security guard box! Lucky, the insurance that this man bought for the bike still had 2 days left before it expired.

Our reporters checked that during February 2007 the statistics of stolen motorbikes and cars in Pattaya was over 300. This means that about 10 are stolen per day. Another part is the carelessness of many motorbike drivers since they don’t properly chain their vehicles or use any extra equipment to lock their vehicles. If they were more careful then surely about 50 % of this crime should reduce – the other 50 % is left for the police to solve.