THAI SCAM WATCH PUBLISHED AT ASIA SENTINEL

We've recently had two articles published by Asia Sentinel, one of the most important English language news websites in the Asia region. We are extremely grateful to Asia Sentinel for this opportunity. 

 The first article titled Thailand in Parade of SEA Cyberscam Nations focused, as does much of this blog, on US government sanctioned Cambodian cyberscammers and their meetings with Thai police offices and businessmen, Thai Police Lt. Gen. Jirabhop “Kong” Bhuridej and Thai Police General Visanu Prasatthong-Osoth 

 One of those meetings involved wanted Cambodian cyberscam center operator Rithy Raksmei which, when photographs emerged of Raksmei having lunch with Kong, was passed off by the Thai police as some kind of "bilateral meeting".

 As our Asia Sentinel piece states - 

 "Of course, the usual outcome of a serious bilateral meeting between the law officials of two nations wouldn’t be random photographs released 18months later of various police officers, a company chairman and a wanted cyber scam center criminal all sitting down for lunch together. In most circumstances, there’d be official joint statements, press announcements before and after the event, memorandums of understanding, notes of the meeting, etc. None of this exists, and it seems the official bilateral meeting between Thai and Cambodia law enforcement held in a Bangkok restaurant in November 2024 only came into existence once photographs of it emerged on the CSI LA Facebook page in 2026." 

 The second article, Generals at the Feeding Trough, focused on the various business dealings of the Thai military and, in particular, the takeover of State Operated Enterprises (SOE) in the post-2014 coup era. 

The article examined how the coup makers took charge of Thailand's vast SOE sector wherein senior security state operators like Kong and Visanu, with negligible oversight. have been appointed to the boards of these companies. Impunity goes hand and hand with this and our conclusion is that this leads to no push back when such appointees are caught meeting the likes of Rithy Raksmei or Ly Yong Phat. 

 "Impunity is written into the Thai system in a manner hard to comprehend for anyone living in a functioning democracy. As Asia Sentinel reported on July 13, (also raised at thaiscamwatch.blogspot.com), senior police and business figures from Thailand met notorious US government-sanctioned cyberscam center criminals Rithy Raksmei and Ly Yong Phat. One complete lack of institutional accountability was by Airports of Thailand (AOT), whose directors were photographed meeting Thai Police General Visanu Prasatthong-Osoth – who has served or is serving on the AOT board, with Visanu as the chairman, with several of its directors replaced with military officers post- coup. AOT has issued no statement, answered no questions and offered no explanation."

We hope to have more articles in Asia Sentinel and other prominent news websites in the near future and will keep our readers informed if and when this happens.