Bangkok - A Thai traffic cop has sped off with his colleagues' reward money due for bagging traffic offenders, news reports said Friday.

Scores of policemen in the northern city of Chiang Mai filed a complaint that Sergeant-Major Thanawat Sinpieng, 47, had disappeared, along with his family, and a 1.2-million-baht (35,000-dollar) bounty for catching traffic violators.

Thanawat had previously been assigned several times to collect reward money from a local bank for distribution to about 150 of his colleagues.

But his friends in the police became suspicious when he failed to return from the bank on December 29, said the Nation newspaper.

Bonus money for booking errant drivers is used to encourage ordinary policemen not to engage in the common practice of demanding on-the-spot fines from motorists to supplement what is widely recognized as poor pay. (dpa)