In a major victory for authorities, a French drug kingpin who was part of an infamous and notorious international trafficking network was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand. Authorities report that Andre Cabau, 39, used tactics seen in the “Fast and Furious” movies to traffick some of his drugs.
At a news conference, Thai and French police reported that Cabau was arrested for entering Thailand with a phony French passport. He will now be deported to France to continue serving a prison sentence for previous drug trafficking charges.
Catherine Occhini, a French official at the French Embassy in Bangkok described Cabau as “a big fish. He was a big trafficker and specialized in moving drugs around Europe.”
Cabau was initially arrested in 2005 in Marseille. He was then was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to seven years in prison. However, he was released early on parole, but one condition of his release was that he remain in France.
Police reported that soon thereafter, Cabau fled to Thailand and entered the country most recently in 2013 on a bogus passport. While living in Thailand under a fake moniker, he resided with a Thai wife and young child on the resort island Koh Samui. Police Major General Apichart Suribunya also reported that Cabau had a second luxury apartment in Bangkok, where he was arrested and taken into custody on November 20th.
French law enforcement worked closely with Interpol to track Cabau and then notified the Thai police.
According to a statement from Thai authorities, Cabau’s intricate drug network smuggled ecstasy, cocaine and other drugs from the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium into France.
Thai police General Wut Liptapanlop stated that, “Their actions copied the famous movies ‘Fast and Furious,’ where they used high-speed cars to transport the drugs.”
To illustrate the similarities, police actually showed a video clip of an unrelated high-speed car chase. While Cabau sat there handcuffed, he told reporters that, “Yes, I admit that I used high-speed cars.”
Occhini told the press that the network to which Cabau belonged was extremely organized and worked at night. The network’s members used several powerful, fast cars to race the drugs across the open borders of Europe. Oftentimes, a scouting car would conduct a test drive through police customs checkpoints and then alert the other drug-carrying drivers that it was all clear.
