Thai police nab British drug fugitive in Phuket
28-year-old Ben Ransom, who has been living in the tourist island pretending to be boxer Billy, is wanted in the UK for drug trafficking charges
Crime Suppression Division (CSD) police finally tracked down and arrested a British fugitive who had been hiding in Thailand over the past two years pretending to be a boxer.
CSD chief Pol Maj-General Montree Theskhan said on Tuesday that Ben Ransom, 28, was tracked down to a restaurant in Phuket’s Muang district on Monday after they received a request from the UK National Crime Agency.
The British agency had called on Thailand’s Central Investigation Bureau to find Ransom, who had fled to the Kingdom in 2022.
Ransom was fleeing a drug trafficking case in which he would have been imprisoned for life if convicted.
After investigation, CSD found that Ransom had rented a condominium in Phuket and was pretending to be a boxer named Billy.
Police said he has been handed over to the Office of the Attorney-General’s Foreign Litigation Department to be extradited to the UK.
