The lure of easy money proved too much for some
Written by changthai11 on Monday, October 6th, 2008
The lure of easy money proved too much for some
KING-OUA LAOHONG
The promise of getting a return of one million baht from an investment of 100,000 baht proved too tempting for 86 well-off people in Bangkok and the provinces over the past five years.
Of course, this promise of easy money was too good to be true.
People with polished skills of persuasion had talked these people into investing their money into a hospital business.
The Department of Special Investigation (DSI) has now taken over investigations into the case from police in Ratchaburi, where several people lodged complaints against the people running the scam.
Two of the gang were arrested and police are searching for more members of the gang. The central province of Ratchaburi is the target area and DSI investigators and Ratchaburi police have spent three years - from 2005 to 2007 - tracking down two suspected members of the crime ring, Ekkarin Khamsri and Chulaporn Ritthapai, 59, who were arrested in December 2007.
The victims of the scam come from Bangkok, Ratchaburi, Samut Sakhon, Samut Songkhram, Phetchaburi and Chiang Mai.
One victim, Jirapan Wan-iam, a middle-aged businessman from Samut Songkhram, said a friend introduced him to the suspects four years ago and claimed Ekkarin was the owner of the Ek Clinic. Ekkarin and Ms Chulaporn convinced Mr Jirapan to invest in a project to build the Cha-am Memorial Hospital in Ratchaburi’s Muang district.
Mr Jirapan said the suspects claimed the hospital project had received huge financial support from abroad, but they could not get access to the cash due to legal hurdles related to the Finance Ministry and the Bank of Thailand (BoT).
The suspects said they did not want the hospital project to be disrupted, so they needed to raise funds among local investors to continue the construction and promised to pay high returns in four months - for example, a person investing US$100,000 (about 3.4 million baht) was promised a return in the form of bonds worth $15 million.
Piyawat Kingkate, chief of the DSI’s special litigation office, said the suspects gave their victims fake security documents issued under the names of internationally-recognised banks and also the BoT.
They also told their victims the documents could be used as collateral to guarantee other businesses.
Pol Col Piyawat said the suspects managed to persuade their victims to hand over cash, partly because Ekkarin posed as a trustworthy and wealthy surgeon. He also told his victims he was the chairman of the Ethnic Global International Affairs Foundation Incorporation and he had the foundation’s logo stamped on the security documents he gave to his victims. The DSI discovered the foundation did not exist.
Pol Maj Ittipol Promduang, one of the DSI investigators working on the case with Ratchaburi police, said the DSI is gathering information to see if any other people are involved in the ring and are trying to trace the money the ring swindled from its victims.
However, Ekkarin died on Jan 15 this year while in detention at the central prison in Ratchaburi. Ms Chulaporn is still in prison. The DSI asked the Office of the Attorney-General to freeze some of the suspects’ assets.
