IT WAS not the best way to celebrate Mother's Day. With two young children and eight months pregnant with her third, Tassanee Suklian found herself arrested today and accused of 50 robberies.

Khun Tassanee sat in Chalong Police Station today as a succession of robbery victims from all over Phuket entered the room and identified her as the person who robbed them.

According to police, Khun Tassanee spent the later months of her pregnancy going into beauty shops and spas around the island and befriend whoever was sitting in the reception area.

When they left the room, she took what she could and disappeared, Police Colonel Boonlert On-Klang said. Khun Tassanee, aged 28, said that she did not ever let her husband know that she was a thief.

She told him whenever she had extra money that it came from her mother. Her husband had lost his job, so she had to provide for the family.

Khun Tassanee had a regular job at Phuket Grocery in Phuket City, she told Phuketwan today. But her second job as a thief helped to equip their home with furniture, she said.

It also helped to clothe the children and provide the family with a laptop and a large television, she said.

Khun Tassanee, who lived in Kho Keaw, near Boat Lagoon, said she took whatever was available: wallets, mobile telephones cash and credit cards.

She used the information from drivers' licences and other ID to test credit card passwords, and sometimes discovered she could withdraw money.

In one case, she was able to take out 100,000 baht, police said. In other cases, she told people she did not have a bank account and needed their number to arrange a transfer.

Many kind people helped out Khun Tassanee, a Phuket person..

Today, Mother's Day, about 20 victims identified her at Chalong Police Station, and more will come tomorrow to point their fingers and identify stolen goods.

Khun Tassanee was caught after police stations around the island were warned to be on the lookout for a large woman who was suspected of many thefts.

Various accounts of robberies in similar circumstances had come from Kata, Karon, Patong, Phuket City, Kathu and Rawai.

Today, Mother's Day, she went to a beauty shop in Karon, police said. The owner was aware of the description that a large woman was wanted.

She called police, and Khun Tassanee was arrested near the post office in Karon.

Police said Khun Tassanee admitted to stealing for two years, but more often recently. By next Mother's Day, she will have three children and they will most likely all be in the care of her mother.

Khun Tassanee is due to give birth next month but it was not clear today what will happen on that ''mother's day.''

This afternoon, at Chalong Police Station, she said she still had not had the courage to tell her husband what she had been doing.

Once Chalong police have completed their inquiries, the court will decide the penalty for Khun Tassanee.

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