Russian-Canadian arrested for overstaying, begging on Koh Pha Ngan

Residents on Koh Pha Ngan island in the southern province of Surat Thani alerted the Tourist Police to a Russian-Canadian man found overstaying his visa and begging for food from locals.

Residents on the island reported to the Tourist Police that they witnessed a foreign man begging for food from various households and sleeping on a footpath. The foreigner’s begging behaviour annoyed people in the area, prompting them to contact the police.

Officers arrested the foreigner, later identified as 56 year old half-Russian, half-Canadian man Dimitri, outside the IT product store, Banana IT, yesterday, August 12. Dimitri was found to have overstayed his visa by 1,599 days, approximately four years.

The police requested to check his passport and found that he held both Russian and Canadian passports. He revealed that he was a half-Russian, half-Canadian national and entered Thailand using his Russian passport.

Dimitri was taken to Koh Pha Ngan Police Station for legal proceedings, where he was charged under Section 81 of the Immigration Act: residing in the country with an expired visa. The penalty is imprisonment of up to two years and a fine of up to 20,000 baht.

Thai police in each tourist destination are cracking down on foreigners overstaying their visas and those working illegally in the country.

In a similar report last week, Tourist Police officers arrested an Israeli drug dealer and an illegal Russian barber on the island. The Israeli woman was found offering ecstasy to other foreign visitors on the island while the Russian barber was found operating a barbershop targeting customers from his own country.

At the beginning of the month, officers from the Phuket Provincial Immigration Office arrested seven foreigners for overstaying their visas. The nationalities of these foreign nationals were not made public. Four other foreign men were arrested in Phuket around the same time for overstaying their visas, with one having overstayed for over five years.