Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing, well frankly we're discussing the situation involving frozen bank accounts; I have discussed this at length. I did a video contemporaneously with this one where we were talking about the fact that look, there are scams in Thailand frankly; I did a scam alert video just to advise people that look unfortunately there are people that impersonate even our firm. Now it has happened with less frequency although recently there seems to have been a bit of a rash of it. We again let the police know. They seem very adept at shutting down bank accounts of people, but they are saying it's for scams. Well we've been dealing with this for a while and frankly, I'm kind of wondering what the priority really is here. 

That said, 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: "Thailand's Government today announced the seizure of over 10.1 billion baht in assets from major transnational scam and money laundering networks, concluding a successful nationwide crackdown. 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." Yeah look, I've made my concerns pretty clear that I think that this scam thing is a pretext for just shutting down people's bank accounts without from what I can see real due process and just saying "oh you just have to come in and prove to us it’s your money or something." I don't exactly know what the procedure is.

We have assisted some folks but mostly when this happens, our clients are just like, "hey, I just want assistance closing the account and opening it somewhere where I don't need to worry about this", which we've tried to help people with as and where we could. But that being said, I have made my concerns known on all of this banking stuff but it's ostensibly being done to combat scams. Okay, and it seems like that in the past, especially the past couple of months in earnest, there has been a lot going on with scams along the border; issues involving online gambling. It's really hard to put all the pieces together as to just exactly what's going on at any given moment. But long story short, it looks like this whole bank account thing is probably not necessarily going anywhere. It's a lot less acute than it was a few weeks ago with regard to this stuff but look, it's still kind of a concern. We have been assisting a number of clients in getting bank accounts set up both just on their own, as well as in conjunction with assisting with the Visa process, to be able to stay long term in Thailand. Important to point out DTV Visa holders are ineligible to get a bank account, but folks like standard Retirement Visas, yeah, you can go ahead and get a bank account here in Thailand. It may even be possible with other types of visa categories. For example the Business Visa shouldn't really be an issue, especially where a Work Permit is issued; Marriage Visas have proving to be a little bit touch and go with regard to new bank accounts; we are getting solutions for people.

But that said, yeah again the main thing to take away from this is whether or not, the ultimate goal of combating these scams may be laudable, and the government in terms of law enforcement may be dealing with what they need to be dealing with here. Again I made a video about scam alerts where they are talking about all this scam stuff; all they seem really interested in doing is shutting down people's bank accounts. Meanwhile, we still have folks that try to perpetrate scams associated with our name and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a lot of activity on that notwithstanding the fact that we have multiple times informed relevant authorities here and it doesn't seem to again be a major priority for them. So it kind of just anecdotally leads me to question sort of the motives behind all of this. That said, okay presuming the motives are in order, at the end of the day, what does this mean for foreigners? Well what it means is again, I think this scrutiny associated with banking is going to continue, and so those that are looking to come here new to set up a bank account, it may not be a terrible idea to contact a legal professional, gain some insight and guidance into how best to proceed.