Jewels worth $1.7 m stolen

The men entered a booth at the Bangkok Gems & Jewellry Fair on Saturday and asked the vendor to open a display case containing nearly 100 items with a reported value of 56 million baht ($1.7 million), then distracted her and ran off with it, said police Lt Col Pairote Rattanamanee, in charge of the investigation. It was not immediately clear how the men, believed to be unarmed and of Middle Eastern descent, managed to slip past the security at the fair’s convention hall, located near the Thai capital, he said.

The booth’s vendors described the trio as clean-shaven, handsome, roughly in their 40s. Video footage indicated they had two male accomplices.