Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing, well land, specifically real estate in Thailand and connection to recent developments regarding crackdowns on money laundering by law enforcement officials here in Thailand. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thailand seizes over 10.1 billion baht from transnational scam networks in major crackdown. Quoting directly: "Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul led the Press conference, confirming that searches across 50 targets in 22 provinces yielded significant assets, including yachts, luxury cars, land, and frozen bank accounts, marking a substantial victory against the syndicates often referred to as 'Grey China' groups." Quoting further: "The latest seizure, valued at 9.27 billion baht, was against the Yim Leak Network, which was connected to a complex "purity check" scam and extensive money laundering through Thai real estate."

So without drilling down any further, when I first read this article when I heard that, what do they call this, "purity check" scam, I was kind of wondering - I haven't drilled down much further and I'll keep following it - but I immediately was wondering, there's a movie called American Hustle which is actually a pretty good film. I read the book, it was based on Abscam if I recall, and there's a scene in there though, and it's actually in the book toward the beginning where they actually catch the guy that managed to put on this elaborate thing where they managed to basically entrap a bunch of politicians and things who were sort of soliciting bribes and stuff of this nature but the con man that they caught, they brought in to make this all happen if you will, to create the sting operation, he actually got busted himself for what is called an "advanced fee scam" and these things can be really elaborate where you're sort of like told, "hey you may be eligible for whatever"  but you have got to pay this fee in order to go, sometimes they even use the term "due diligence" - "oh we have to do the due diligence on you", and they make up whatever, but they get your money on the basis that you are being checked out in order to benefit from some great investment or whatever. There's always some fee that you have got to pay in in order to go through this. Now I don't know that that's exactly what they were doing here where they were pulling the advanced fee scam, but it sounds like whatever they were doing has caught the eye of law enforcement and they are seizing assets and bank accounts. One thing that is important to understand with regard to this, for foreigners watching this video is again, as I've discussed in many other videos, foreigners should be very, very careful with anybody telling "oh, you can own land, you can use this do this whatever". Look, there's a narrow set of circumstances where foreigners may be able to benefit from usage of land in Thailand. Things like leases, Usufructs are an option. There may even be a narrow subset pf facts, where being on a corporation that may own land may be permissible, may be appropriate given the legal circumstances, but in the vast majority, and by vast majority I mean in the upper 90 percentile of cases, foreigners who are looking to effectively own land via some kind of mechanism in Thailand, it's a bad way to go, that's just generally speaking. 

That said, the point to take away from this video is law enforcement, be it because they started off looking at these, as they call it "Great China groups" whatever, they are scrutinizing now. The momentum has begun; it's sort of like rolling a snowball down a hill and starting an avalanche or something. I would presume that we are going to see more scrutiny associated with foreigners and land, and also probably more than with financial transactions associated with real estate here in the Kingdom of Thailand.