Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation (DSI) has charged celebrity actress Sawika 'Pinky' Chaidet, her mother Sarinya, and brother Sarayut for their involvement in the forex Ponzi scheme Forex -3D, which defrauded people of around 2 billion baht (over $66 million).
Local news, the daily Bangkok Post reported that Pinky and her two family members were summoned by the law enforcement to hear the charges on Wednesday. They are blamed for colluding to defraud people and for disseminating fake information through a computer system.
Though they acknowledged all the charges, the trio denied any wrongdoing.
One of the Biggest Frauds in Thailand
Forex-3D was a massive Ponzi Scheme across Thailand and is the country’s first forex scam of such scale. It operated from its web-domain and multiple Facebook pages, offering investors 60 to 80 percent foreign currency investments and 100 percent in capital-protected funds.
According to the official records, the scheme cheated around 9,692 investors.
The Thai authorities were first alarmed about the massive fraud in November 2019 when the first group of victims sought help after Forex-3D failed to provide the promised returns.
The charges on the actress came after the police nabbed Apiruk Kothi, the mastermind of the Ponzi scheme, in January as he secretly returned to Thailand after over a year on the run. The authorities did not bring any official charges against him yet as the investigation is still ongoing.
The DSI is now looking for Kothi’s accomplices in running the fraudulent scheme. The report outlined that Thai law enforcement identified another actor involved in the scam, who will soon be summoned for interrogation.
While the investigation is ongoing, the authorities are in the process of compensating the victims from the proceeds collected from several raids on the Forex-3D premises. To date, DSI verified more than 8,400 claims of Forex-3D victims.
