Siam Firm Inter Laws was established by Khun Somsak Chopaka an Attorney at Law with 30 years of working experience in domestic and international law, for individuals both foreign and local, domestic entities and in-house legal counsel for numerous established international companies. Khun Somsak will be giving legal advice about the ever changing situation in regards to Thai Law and keeping readers up to date with the constant changing business and social environment here in Thailand. You may be familiar with call center scams, either having seen them mentioned in the media or you may have even been contacted by them yourself. In Thailand and other parts of South East Asia it is very easy to set up a fake business and call center to scam money from another country. The meaning of a call center is actually a system set up and managed by a company to provide a service or some form of business such as selling products. They will always queue incoming calls and receive them one by one by an operator until they are finished, this is the system used by real call center companies such as AIS call center or 1133 telephone directory or even 191 for emergency police hotline. A call center scam will usually involve a group of people both foreign and local who will call possible targets and ask them to invest in a fake company that deals in gold, oil or another valuable resource. They will try to make the targets believe that they are the real deal and promise a large return in profits, in closing they will ask the targets to transfer money to them of which they will never return back. These operations will usually target senior citizens and retirees who have savings and would rather invest in something to see profits rather than collect interest from banks, common countries targeted include Australia, Europe and other developed countries. A call will normally be a hard sale with the scammers introducing themselves as a big successful company that is a broker in gold or oil and will always beat the market with its insider knowledge and market forecast. By being aggressive they will convince the target that they are the real deal and it is a good idea to invest and send money to them, they do this by not letting the targets get any questions in during the sale to try to force them to buy in. The salesman will make many promises they won’t keep and will resort to any means necessary to make the sale, promising ludicrous deals and bargains for the victim.
The Thai police sometimes call these operations a “Boiler Room” scam as it is usually set up in a clandestine area such as a home or apartment building with the scammers working at night to coincide with the different time zones. Most of the time the people who set up these companies are gangsters who will try to declare themselves as a one hundred percent legitimate business with a good looking website and advertising, when actually they do not have a business at all so they only try to deceive you into paying them money for free. When they are finally caught and arrested the police usually do not have enough evidence to convict them abroad and the victims never come to Thailand to be a witness in Thai court or give evidence or money transfer.
They will be convicted in Thai court and usually receive a six month sentence maybe even less and will have to pay a fine; these punishments are minimal compared to the damage they have caused, if any of the convicted are foreigners then the immigration department will choose to deport them back to their own country and they will be put on Thailand blacklist for re entry. Lawyer comment: If you are contacted on whatever basis listen to them first, if they keep talking like a salesman constantly asking you to buy something without proof of a real product beware. Do not trust them and believe everything that they say because they will try to steal the money from you, please understand that they are not the real article.
Always check through trusted sources and consider researching about their company to make sure they are legitimate. Be safe and protect yourself and I will save you in the end. If you have any questions or inquiries please feel free to contact us at any time. By Somsak Chopaka of Siam Firm Inter Laws English Hotline: 081 808 9175, 089 774 6001, 084 979 4714 Pattaya Office: +66 (0) 38 906 721-3 Bangkok Office: + 66 (0) 2 260 3025 – 7 Hua Hin Office: +66 (0) 32 531 508 somsak@siamfirm. co. th For more information see www. siamfirm. co. th
