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Parents of Shane Todd Seek help from US Congress and Flamboyant Thai Pathologist Dr. Porntip Rojanasunan

Rick Todd (right) and his wife Mary walk out of the Subordinate courts in Singapore

SINGAPORE – The parents of a US scientist found hanged in Singapore last year said Thursday they will seek a US congressional inquiry and tap a celebrity Thai pathologist to prove their son was murdered.

Mary Todd, mother of the late researcher Shane Todd whose death in June 2012 was ruled a suicide by the Singapore police, indicated the family did not expect the US government to intervene because of its interests in Asia.

Shane Todd whose death in June 2012 was ruled a suicide by the Singapore police

“We don’t know, we don’t know what the US government will do,” she told news reporters in an interview at Singapore’s Changi Airport before she, her husband Rick and two sons boarded a flight back to the United States.

“We’ve got so much evidence backing up what we have claimed that our son was involved with,” she said, adding that the US government “is very tentative because of their relationship with Singapore and China.

“I think they’d rather have us go away. But we’re not going away.”

Asked if the campaign will include pressing for a US congressional investigation, she said “yes”.

The family says that before he died, Shane Todd feared he was being made to compromise US national security in a secret project involving a Singapore institute and a Chinese telecom firm accused of international espionage.

The Todds stormed out of a Singapore coroner’s inquest on Tuesday, saying they had lost faith in the process, after a succession of witnesses gave evidence that he hanged himself in his apartment.

Their case was further undermined on Wednesday when two senior US medical examiners backed Singapore’s suicide report and rejected a murder scenario put forward by another American pathologist who had been engaged by the Todds.

In the interview, Mary Todd distanced the family from the theory of their pathologist witness, Edward Adelstein, who said their son may have been disabled with a stun gun and killed with an arm lock before being hanged on his bathroom door.

“No. We have another pathologist in Thailand who said she believes he was strangled and then hung on the door. And that’s what we believe.”

The head of the Todds’ Singaporean legal team, Gloria James-Civetta, said the mother was referring to Porntip Rojanasunan, a flamboyant Thai pathologist involved in a number of high-profile cases.

Porntip told news reporters in Bangkok that a Todd family lawyer had approached her and showed her some photos, but it was not an “official consultation”.

Porntip Rojanasunan, a flamboyant Thai pathologist

Asked whether she had said it was a strangling, she said: “I did not make such a comment, I said there are suspicious points that need to be explained and answered.”

The two firms implicated by the family — Todd’s former employer, Singapore’s state-linked Institute of Microelectronics, and China’s Huawei Technologies — say they only held preliminary talks on a project with commercial applications.

A US congressional committee last year labelled Huawei and ZTE, another Chinese telecom firm, as potential security threats that should be excluded from US government contracts and barred from acquiring US firms.

The Todds have vowed to shift their campaign to the “court of public opinion” and Mary Todd said they hope to produce enough evidence to at least force Singapore’s state coroner to render an “undetermined” verdict.

“There is new evidence every day. It’s crazy.”

“What we are hoping is that the (Singapore) judge has been put in a position where he feels that he has to look at all the evidence,” she said as the family waited for their flight home.

“So if he looks at the evidence, he’ll come up with, we’re hoping at least, ‘undetermined'”.

Hearings are scheduled to end on Tuesday and the state coroner’s verdict is expected by late June. It will only deal with the cause of death and cannot be appealed.

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Crime

Police Officer Being Ordained at Temple Arrested for Running Scam Call Center

Police Officer Being Ordained at Temple Arrested

Police in Northern Thailand have arrested a fellow officer as he was being ordained at a temple in Ngao district of neighbouring Lampang province.

Pol Lt Col Bandit Khonkan chief inspector from the Hang Dong police station was disrobed and taken to the Chang Puak station in Chiang Mai. He was arrested on charges of running a call centre scam gang in Chiang Mai Province.

According to Thai Media Chiang Mai Provincial Police Region 5 obtained an arrest warrant for Pol Lt Col Bandit on Friday from the Chiang Mai Provincial Court for procuring illegal telecom equipment, setting up a station and using public airwaves to run a telecommunications business without permission.

Pol Lt Col Bandit reportedly told investigators that he was not the ringleader and was only a member of the gang with Chinese partners.

His arrest followed the apprehension of his 26-year-old daughter, Miss Wanuchapond, 26, and three others during raids at three housing projects in Chiang Mai on Friday, Pol Maj Gen Weerachon Boontawee, deputy chief of Provincial Police Region 5 told Thai media.

During the raids police police discovered around 12 GSM gateways, or SIM boxes, which are devices used for converting cellular networks into mobile phone numbers used domestically.

The chief inspectors daughter Miss Wanuchapond told the arresting officers that she was paid 8,000 baht a month at each of the three locations for renting thr rooms and monitoring devices.

She claimed she had no idea what the devices were and accepted the job because the pay was attractive.

Police investigators working with telecom regulators used a special tracking device to monitor the gang’s communications and learned that its base was in Myanmar opposite Mae Sai district of Chiang Rai.

The call center gang used the GSM gateways to make calls over the internet to scam people in Thailand out of million of baht.

The GSM gateways transmitting signals via SIM boxes to convert them into domestic phone numbers, duping victims into thinking they were being called from Thai government agencies.

Pol Maj Gen Weerachon said that each SIM box held 32 SIM cards, with a capacity of up to 300,000 calls a month. The seized devices had made fraudulent calls over 3.6 million times.

He said the their investigation is ongoing and they are working to track down the remaining conspirators, including Chinese and other Thai suspects.

Authorities are still deciding whether Pol Lt Col Bandit will be dismissed from the force, he said, adding that so far, no other officers are known to have been involved.

Police in Chiang Rai Launch Crackdown on Cyber Criminals in Golden Triangle

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Settha Thavisin has authorized the establishment of an emergency cyber center operated by the Royal Thai Police to combat transnational crimes committed by call center gangs along the Thai border in Chiang Rai province.

On July 19, Prime Minister Settha Thavisin directed the Center to combat information technology crimes. The Royal Thai Police (Royal Thai Police) will crack down on call center gangs in Myanmar, Laos, and along the border.

His directive comes as call center gangs ratchet up their scams to defraud people of their money, causing concern among Thais and jeopardizing the country’s economic and social stability.

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Crime

Thai Immigration Police Arrest Colombian Tourists Over Home Invasions

Thai Immigration Police Arrest Colombian Tourist

Immigration police officers have arrested four Colombian nationals in connection with a series of home burglaries at luxury housing complexes in the Bangkok metropolitan area and Chiang Buri Province.

Pol Maj Gen Panthana Nuchanart, deputy commissioner of the Immigration Bureau, told a press briefing that three of the suspects were apprehended in Nonthaburi Province and the fourth in South Pattaya, Chon Buri Province.

According to the Bangkok Post, the Colombians were charged with stealing conspiracy and seized around 3 million baht (US$82,500.00).

According to Pol Maj Gen Panthana, the criminals rode motorcycles through housing estates, scoping out the properties and waiting for the owners to depart before committing their crimes.

He stated that all four of the accused denied any involvement in the home break-ins, but the arresting squad discovered evidence that implicated them.

Police called to home invasion

Meanwhile, police were dispatched to a luxury housing development in Tambon Nong Prue, Chonburi Province, after a Chinese man was attacked during a house invasion.

When they arrived, they discovered the house owner, Mr. Qian Peng Yi, visibly scared and with marks from being tied up with a cable. He informed police that three Chinese males broke into his home at 9 p.m., one of whom brandished a gun at him and directed him to his bedroom.

They bound his hands and feet, gagged him with fabric, taped his head, and forced him into the bed. The intruders then attempted to compel him into transferring 10 million baht in cryptocurrencies to them, endangering the life of his 33-year-old cousin who was in a second-floor bedroom.

While they scoured the house in search of riches, Mr. Peng Yi managed to flee and hide; he subsequently observed them leave with his cousin. Officials investigated the property and analyzed security camera footage from the incident and surrounding areas.

Around 9 p.m., a 30-year-old van driver came at the Bang Lamung police station after being contacted by an agency to carry Chinese customers from Pattaya to Suvarnabhumi Airport.

The driver informed authorities that he was supposed to pick them up at a motel about a kilometer from the Chinese businessman’s home. He then drove them to Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport, arriving at 1 a.m. and receiving 1,800 baht.

The driver took a snapshot of the group smoking at the airport gate and identified one of them as the victim’s cousin. Police suspected coordination between her and the three suspects in her cousin’s heist, who all departed Thailand on the same aircraft.

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Police in Bangkok Discover Six Vietnamese Tourists Dead in 5 Star Hotel

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Crime

Son of Thailand’s Leading Legal Scholar on Corruption Arrested for Running Online Gambling Network

thailand, gambling network

The son of a former senator and leading economist and expert on corruption and gambling in Thailand has been arrested for on charges of running an online gambling network and its payment system.

Police from Thailand’s Technology Crime Suppression Division (TCSD) have confiscated assets worth more than (US$ 11.1 million) 400 million baht.

Narote Piriyarangsan, 33, was arrested following crackdowns in three sites around the city, according to Pol Maj Gen Athip Pongsiwapai, commander of the police Technology Crime Suppression Division (TCSD).

Mr Narote’s father, Sangsit Piriyarangsan, is an economist who has written articles and books about corruption and gambling. He was one of the appointed senators that were investigating the government’s intention to legalize casino gaming before their terms expired.

Police also detained 39-year-old Narayut Narakaew, the owner of the gambling website 69pgslot.com. The Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the couple for operating an internet gambling service and money laundering.

According to the Bangkok Post, police seized two desktop computers, one laptop computer, 14 mobile phones, 21 bank passbooks, 53 ATM cards, and four high-end cars — a Ferrari 926 GTS, an Aston Martin, a Lexus, and a Subaru — totaling more than 400 million baht.

Police launched the inquiry after discovering the online gambling site, which accepted funds via an automatic deposit-withdrawal system through bank accounts and deposits in the AskMePay system. Players scanned the VPay QR code as well as the QR codes for Heng Online 888 or Heng Pay Company.

Police also discovered that payments received via QR code scans were transferred to the account of Heng Pay Co and then to the gambling website’s mule accounts using AskMePay, which did not use banks’ face recognition scanning. An inquiry indicated a monthly turnover of approximately 5 billion baht.

According to investigators, the website has been up and running for around four years, with the payment mechanism in use for roughly eight months.

According to Pol Maj Gen Athip, Mr Narote owns the gaming website’s payment systems and is the director of Heng Pay Co. After gathering evidence, authorities requested arrest warrants for 14 people.

Thailand does not allow almost any kind of gaming. Even though the law doesn’t say anything specific about online gaming, it is still considered gambling. The country has pretty strict rules about gambling. Thai punters can bet on the national lottery and horse races, but they can’t bet on any other types of games.

But it’s not a secret that there is a huge illegal gaming business in Thailand, even though it’s illegal.

The illegal casinos, online betting shops, underground lotteries, and pop-up bookies that take bets on everything from cockfights to Muay Thai make a shadow economy that is worth billions of dollars every year.

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