Thailand News Today | Thai actress arrested for promoting a ponzi scheme
Famous Thai actress Savika Chaiyadej was among 19 people arrested yesterday for allegedly defrauding people of money via a ponzi scheme.
Thailand’s Criminal Court denied Sawika, fearing the defendants would flee if they were granted temporary release.
Sawika is accused of committing fraud under the Computer Crimes Act for their involvement in a ponzi scheme. The scam persuades people to invest their money in foreign exchange through the website forex-3d.com, claiming that they will make 60-80% profit on their investments.
However, once people invested, they didn’t get any profits in return as promised. According to the DSI, around 14,000 people were duped into the scam, investing an estimated 1.9 billion baht in total.
In October 2019, the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) began investigating Forex-3D after receiving a complaint from an investor who claimed Forex-3D was a scam. A number of well-known celebrities in Thailand were summoned to testify alongside the founder and CEO of Forex-3D Apirak Kotthi.
Sawika began advertising Forex-3D in January 2020. She was a good friend of Tangmo, the famous Thai actress who drowned in the Chao Phraya river in February.
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Thai netizens are curious as to why the Office of the Thai PM has spent so much money on advertisements after a recent poll by Nielsen ranked it in 13th place for the most money spent on advertising in Thailand.
New York City-based Nielsen is a US information, data, and market measurement firm with clients in over 100 countries around the world. The company produced a list of companies and industries in the Asia Pacific region that spent the most money on advertising. The rank was created from information and data collected during the first half of 2022.
The rank of Thai companies and industries was also featured in the project. The top 3 spenders are Unilever, Nestle, and Procter & Game, while the Office of the Thai Prime Minister came in at 13th place, spending more money on advertising than companies like Shopee, L’Oréal, and PepsiCo.
Many people questioned why the Office of the PM would spend more on ads than e-commerce platform Shoppe. Some asked whether the advertising budget came from the public purse, i.e., Thai people’s taxes, while others assumed the PM’s office used ads to spread news and updates about the government measures. As for its effectiveness, we’ll let the premiere’s approval rating do the talking.
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A soldier appealed to the media for help after revealing she was almost driven to suicide after years of physical and mental abuse by the wife of a senator.
The woman contacted Thai influencer Kanthat Phongphaiboonwet, who spread the news on Facebook and helped her file a complaint against the senator’s wife at a police station.
The Facebook post went viral and the soldier was invited to share her experience of abuse on a popular Channel 3 talk show called Hon-kra-saa.
The soldier revealed how the senator’s wife initially hired her to be a maid at a house and fulfilled a promise to help her become a soldier on 5,300 baht per month.
The soldier said everything was good at the beginning but then her attitude changed and she became very cruel and criticised and punished her for anything trivial.
The mental abuse turned into physical abuse. Her employer slapped her in the face, shocked her with a stun gun, set her hair on fire, and stopped her salary, and more. The senator’s wife even made the soldier harm herself until she bled.
It was at this point the soldier said she thought about committing suicide because the woman threatened to hurt her family if she escaped.
The soldier added that she didn’t even know the real identity of the employer. She said she worked at the house for two years and had never seen any senators visit.
Soon after her story was shared on the Hon-kra-saa, the platform’s host, Kanchai Komploy, and Kanthat were both threatened by an unidentified person warning them not to help the soldier.
Police have yet to comment on the situation, but we’ll keep you posted on whatever updates there are.
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Alright, I’m gonna try staying it in this episode. Let’s see if we don’t get flagged by Youtube. A new government bill on CANNABIS and hemp revealed that people will be allowed to grow up to 15 cannabis plants for household use while selling and advertising cannabis and cannabis-based products online and in vending machines will be prohibited
The House committee spokesperson scrutinising the latest bill announced the amendment will go before parliament for a second reading soon.
Panthep broke down the new bill to make things clearer for those wanting to grow or sell cannabis plants as there have been a number of complaints that there are too many grey areas regarding the selling and consumption of cannabis and hemp.
Panthep made it known that Section 18 of the bill spells out that those wanting to grow cannabis plants for household use can grow no more than 15 plants per household. People need to register if they plan to do so on one of the government channels within one day without paying any registration fees. Also, people are allowed to grow no more than five rai of hemp plants per household for household use.
Section 15 specifies that for business and commercial purposes, those who want to grow, process, and extract the plants for sale must seek government permission. Failure to get permission will result in fines and possible prison sentences.
Meanwhile, section 28 of the bill prohibits online advertising for the sale of cannabis flowering buds, cannabis hashish, cannabis extracts, and equipment used for smoking cannabis.
Section 37 of the bill bans the sale of cannabis and hemp, their extracts, and food with cannabis and hemp as ingredients to people aged below 20, pregnant women, and women who breastfeed children.
Section 37/1 also bans the sale of cannabis and hemp, their extracts, and food with cannabis and hemp as ingredients online and in vending machines while promotional and marketing campaigns are also prohibited.
“Under the bill, the sale of cannabis would be prohibited in temples, religious premises, schools, educational institutes, dormitories, public parks, and other premises declared by the Public Health Minister.
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Koh Samui Court decided to reduce 23 year old Ashley Oosthuizen’s life sentence to 33.4 years at a hearing on Wednesday. Ashley, from South Africa, is behind bars in Nakhon Si Thammarat province in southern Thailand for signing for a package containing MDMA at a restaurant in Koh Samui in late 2020. She was found guilty of international drug trafficking.
The court initially sentenced Ashley to death and later reduced the sentence to life. Ashley’s mother Lynn said her sentence was reduced further on Wednesday…
At the time of her arrest, Ashley was dating an American man named Tristan Nettles. Tristan left Thailand in August, 2020, before Ashley was arrested. Tristan made a website claiming it was him behind the whole operation. Tristan said he was an “international dark web drug dealer” and that Ashley was not involved in the crime at all. Tristan had previously worked as a teacher in a school in Koh Samui and claimed he had been shipping drugs into the school for years.
Ashley’s relatives still believe in her innocence and post updates in their fight for her release on the ‘Free Ashley’ website.
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