Thailand court sentences couple to over 12,000 years in jail for Ponzi scam
Ponzi scheme operators
A Thailand criminal court on Wednesday sentenced a couple to 12,640 years’ jail term each for duping people online in a Ponzi scheme under the guise of a savings plan, as per Straits Times.
The online crimes were committed by Wantanee Tippaveth and her husband Methi Chinpha in 2019 whenthe couple conned people online. However, it was just not the duo who ran this big scam to leach money off people.During the hearing of the trial, the couple confessed to their crimes and said that there were seven other people along with them who played a part to run the scam.
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The couple invited people on the social media platform Facebook between March and October 2019. They would urge people online to make investments in a savings scheme. To make it look appealing to people, they would promise that the investments will bringthem 93 per cent returns.
To make it look real and to convince people of the 'veracity' of the fraud ponzi scheme, Wantanee would often posted online videos wherein she would show off her gold jewellery in a jewellery shop.
She would claim that she owned the shop. However, the jewellery turned out to be fake. In reality, it was not even a shop. It was a counter which the couple set up beside the room which is styled as an office space.
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The court held the couple guilty of scamming millions of dollars from more than 2,000 people in the Ponzi scheme, an investment fraud that pays existing investors with funds collected from new investors.
One of the ways how the couple was able to fool people online is how they portrayed themselves online. Their posts were all curated in a manner that would make them appear to be super-rich people with lavish lifestyles. But everything was fake.
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It was not an ordinary scam as about 2,533 people joined the so-called savings scheme making them the victim.The people who joined the Ponzi scheme ended up making huge investments of about 1.3 billion baht (S$51.3 million).
Total jail for 20 years
The jail term of 12,640 years was commuted to 5,056 years by Thailand’s Criminal Court. The decision was taken by the court because Wantanee Tippaveth and her husband, Methi Chinpha, confessed to their crimes.
Now, both husband and wife are expected to be in prison for just two decades. It is because of the law in Thailand which puts a bar on the total jail time to 20 years each.
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