Brass-necked thieves stole 10,800 Western Digital disk drives from Kuala Lumpur international airport on Sunday by simply driving away a lorry.

According to the New Straits Times the eight-tonne lorry, loaded with 524 boxes of drives worth about 1.7 million Singapore dollars, was parked in a forwarding agent's area in the large warehouse section of the airport.

There were no security staff on duty at 5.20am when people believed to be warehouse staff were allowed to enter the area through an auxiliary police post.

The theft was discovered two hours later and is thought to have been an inside job. Police arrested five suspects: two employees at the forwarding agent's warehouse and three more at a nearby warehouse. On Sunday three more suspects were detained, two of them employees at the forwarding warehouse again - it seems to have recruited staff from a den of thieves - and the third an accomplice.

He led them to a house in Behrang, Tanjung Malim, where most of the stolen drives were found, as well as two more suspects, making 10 in total.

The theft is thought to have been set up by an organised crime syndicate which has made thefts from the airport before. The forwarding agent's security and that of the airport seem to be a bit of a joke. ®