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As the title of this video suggests, and the thumbnail, that thumbnail is actually Le Stat from the film Queen of the Damned. It's a great scene where Le Stat comes out and says he's going to out all the vampires, and he says, "come out, come out, wherever you are". Well that's kind of how I feel at this point in this what do you want to call it? The "timeline of the fake foreign professionals" here in Thailand. I'm sick of it; I'm tired of it. I had kind of just a live and let live attitude about that; I didn't really want to get into it because frankly I am kind of a believer that you want positive movement forward if you will, positive building, you want to build things. You don't want to get into just ranting about the things you don't like, whatever, although there are those who would say "well what have you been doing on this channel?" Well fair enough, but I like to think that the stuff that I have criticized in the past is more conceptual. I don't really want to get into going after people or whatever but honestly, I'm tired of this now. It's gone too far, especially in the social media era, these frauds and fakes are just all over the place.

At the end of the day, I have discussed this at length. Accountants, Lawyers, Doctors; doctors are a little bit different thing. A foreign national can become a doctor, medical doctor here in Thailand but they have to pass the Thai Boards so if you are going to somebody who claims to be a doctor in Thailand, medical doctor and they are a foreign national, you need to ask them, are you Board Certified in Thailand? Let me see your documentation. Meanwhile, with things like Law, nationality is dispositive for whether or not you can actually engage in that profession. 

So too with accounting, so too with property and real estate agency and brokerage, so too with Visa agency and brokerage. It's all there, it's all in the Restricted Occupations. I've gone over this at length in many other videos; I'll stick a link in the description below to the restricted occupations. By the way, they're from the Department of Employment and they are in English on the Department of Employment's website. There is no nebulousness about this. I know that these foreign so-called professionals run around, say, "well it's a gray area". No it's not, no it is not. Stop with that, that's nonsense, and it's only hurting people. That's the reason I'm getting so mad about this now. It's got less to do with my own personal stuff - although that was starting to bug me - it's the fact that they are becoming more and more pervasive, and they are getting out on social media and they're saying things that is just patently untrue and they're getting people in trouble. People have criticized me many times on this channel saying, "well you don't tell us the answer; you don't get specific enough." Yeah, there's a reason for that, because if I did that and people went out and detrimentally relied on what I said, in their circumstances it might not apply and they could get hurt by it. That's why I don't advise like that, and only an idiot runs around giving one-size-fits-all advice. It's a telltale sign of an unprofessional quite frankly. 

Then meanwhile, don't even get me started on the total fakes, I mean total fakes. We've had fake lawyers out here for years. People who just say, "Oh, I'm a lawyer." What's your credential? Nothing. I read a book once. I love that one, "well I've read law." So the ability to read therefore makes you a lawyer.  Look again, I don't want this to turn into a rant but I do want to be clear about why I'm doing what I'm doing, and why I'm doing it is because also in no other jurisdiction on the face of the planet have I ever seen a place where foreigners come to it and then just start saying: "well I can be a lawyer, I can be an accountant in this country." I mean do people come into America, are people walking into Kansas and saying: “I'm going to advise on Kansas Tax Law. Never been here before, don't live here, aren't qualified to provide such advice, but I'm just going to go ahead and do that.” What jurisdiction is that okay in? And quite frankly, I have never seen people more quick to completely just flout and disregard relevant local laws than a number of foreigners who come here to Thailand. It really is galling, but beyond even that, it could cause significant damage and quite frankly has, year on year on year on year. Not a year went by that I didn't see people who lost money buying an entire house because the structure was done improperly or they weren't advised how to do it or they didn't know what they were getting into or gone into some corporate endeavour that turned out to be something boondoggle because one of these flim-flam men, one of these bucket shop people, one of these fly-by-nights told them it was okay and they just bought into it because they didn't know any better. 

Look, at the end of the day and the point I'm trying to make is this needs to end. This notion that foreigners can just come here and pretend to be professionals here, it's just nonsense okay, and really it erodes the credibility of the rule of law, it erodes everything. So, at the end of the day, my only point is look if you're dealing with some foreigner here in Thailand that's claiming to be qualified and claiming that they are legally operating the way that they are, check into them. First of all the big one, are they operating in law or accounting? Are they a Thai? If they're not, boom, that's your answer, you shouldn't be talking to them. Okay medical degree, fine medicine, you're talking to a medical doctor who is a foreigner who claims to be medical doctor in Thailand. Ask them, are you Board Certified here? Get their documentation. They'll be happy to provide it, if they're legitimate. If they're not, maybe look somewhere else.