Malaysian gang pulls off a four-car theft

December 8, 2000
Web posted at: 3:09 PM HKT (0709 GMT)

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (Reuters) -- Four well-dressed men walked into a car showroom on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, tied up a lone saleswoman and drove off in four luxury imported cars.

The gang took two Mercedes Benz, a BMW and a Toyota, worth a combined one million ringgit ($263 million).

Police are checking for links with earlier thefts in the area totalling 10 million ringgit ($2.6 million).

The brazen heist happened on Tuesday, and the New Straits Times, which reported it on Friday, ran a front page cartoon showing a car in a showroom with a sign "PETROL TANK EMPTY" on the bonnet.

Malaysia levies taxes as high as 300 percent on imported cars to protect its domestic car industry, and the local price of a mid-range Mercedes is close to $80,000, compared with around $30,000 in the United States.

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