A crooked cabbie who stole luxury watches worth more than GBP 500,000 from drunken passengers has been seized by police in Austria.

Police say the taxi driver specialised in picking up sozzled revellers from posh nightclubs and restaurants in Vienna.

Then when they’d passed out on the back seat, he stole their designer watches before dropping them off.

Some victims told police the driver had given them doped sweets, but officers found no knockout drops at his home.

Police say he stole dozens of watches like the GBP 9,000 Rolex GMT Master and the GBP 13,000 Panerai from at least 39 victims in the last 12 months.

Cops Arrest Thief Who Stole More Than 150 Pairs Of Women’s Undies, Bras And Bikinis

The suspect – a 33-year-old Turkish national and father of three – has not been named under Austria’s strict privacy laws.

Police finally caught him on 4th September when they used a plainclothes officer posing as a drunk with a flashy watch who pretended to pass out in the cab.

The taxi driver was later arrested with the watch in his trouser pocket, reports local media.

Police say he blew the cash from selling the watches on a BMW car and a no expenses spared three week holiday in his homeland.

Chief investigator Andreas Lang from the Viennese Crime Office said on 7th September: “We noticed that no cases of this kind were reported during this period.”

Lang and his colleagues therefore assumed that the crooked cabbie must have acted on his own.

In a statement from 7th August obtained from Newsflash, police spokesman Philipp Hasslinger said: “The 33-year-old Turkish national is accused of being responsible for 39 individual incidents.

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“The damages he caused was around EUR 600,000 (GBP 515,000).”

Police spokesman Hasslinger added: “Most of the thefts probably occurred after picking up partygoers in the city centre.

“The victims only realised that their watches were gone after they had got out of the taxi.

“Most of them were seriously drunk and hardly remembered anything, which did not necessarily help our team of investigators to make progress.”

Nina Bussek from the Viennese State Prosecution said: “The suspect is in detention at Josefstadt Prison. He has decided not to make a statement.”

Social media users were amazed by the news.

One named ‘CryptoAudi’ joked: “Oh, there it is, my Patek. Please return it to me by mail.”

‘MaxObeyMe’ commented: “Wow! If my watch were among the confiscated ones I’d be the luckiest guy in the world.”

‘JoeMils8’ asked: “Who is accepting candy from a cabbie?”

‘Zibmeldeteinenwegenkritik’ said: “Anyone taking candy from some taxi driver and all the people who are too drunk to realise that someone is nicking a watch from their wrists only has themselves to blame.”

‘Ishowspicey’ just said: “Fake taxi.”

And ‘Noneoftheabovve’ argued: “Taking a cab is dangerous. Go by underground instead!”