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http://absolutelybangkok.com/criminals-par...-bounty-hunter/

 

 

Criminals’ Paradise Thailand: Become A Bounty Hunter

 

Be a good citizen. Render a service to your government. Show some gratitude for that foreign passport you’re holding while living in Thailand - the Thailand it is to say that draws quite some questionable characters to its shores.

 

Thailand deports roughly one foreigner a day, many of them criminals. And for many a reward would have been paid - it could be yours. Become a bounty hunter. Make a living working for a good cause. Seriously. There are people out there doing right that.

 

Imagine you’d gotten hold of Victor Bout, the meanwhile already legendary Russian arms dealer now kept at Klong Prem prison. Or suspected regional al-Qaida supremo Hambali who was caught in Ayutthaya in 2003. Or “swirly-faced” pedophile Christopher Neil who got the world’s attention with his mug shot taken at Suvarnabhumi immigration.

 

Back then even Pol Pot was crossing regularly into Thailand. He needed better hospital care - which he and his leading brothers in arms got in Bangkok.

 

But those are the big fish. According to foreign liaison officers working at Western embassies in Bangkok there are hundreds and hundreds of smaller and less smaller time criminals residing in Thailand.

 

Many are bail jumpers, others bank robbers, some pedophiles, others again tax or financial delinquents, money launderers or drug smugglers - quite a few even rapists and murderers.

 

Thailand’s a haven for them, as even faraway asset manager Mark Nestmann observes. If you need a second passport, I mean a fake identity, Thailand shall be your destination of choice.

 

I once made the rounds with a professional foreign bounty hunter. G., whose nationality I shall withhold, had excellent contacts within the local police. One phone call and he could track and trace a given mobile phone number.

 

He had access to the data of the immigration authorities - but saw no need to carry a gun. All he always carried were handcuffs. He never left home without.

 

One rainy morning, outside Pattaya, we waited for hours in the parking lot of a cheap motel. Turned out to be some wrong information. The guy our head hunter was tracking wasn’t staying there.

 

Boredom and wrong bets are part of a bounty hunter’s life.

 

The following week though that rainy morning was already forgotten. Our bounty hunter caught a guy wanted by his home country for fraud.

 

The biggest catch of the hunter remains a fugitive banker who has long since passed away in a lonely prison back home.

 

Our head hunter was paid a handsome sum for that banker - good money that tempted him to stay in the biz.

 

Once he ended up in prison himself, as he had crossed the ways of some influential phu yai.

 

Just be careful.

 

With the flood of criminals choosing Thailand as their destination of choice, there might as well be a chance for you to report some of your home country’s solanaceous herbs attempting to hide in Thailand.

 

Thailand is sick and tired of having its hospitality abused by foreign felons, as it’s too easy to mix with Thailand’s 15 million foreign tourists a year.

 

Since the arrest of Russian Viktor Bout local and foreign editorials have denounced Thailand’s notorious force of attraction for foreigners.

 

The forces of attraction though mainly being Made in Thailand.

 

Wrote a paper: “In downtown Bangkok, street vendors offer forged American driver’s licenses for about $35. Medical clinics provide plastic surgery for a fraction of U.S. prices. Hotel owners often look the other way if guests give false names. The combination of lax law enforcement, easy hospitality and thousands of backwater towns has attracted a wide roster of fugitives to Thailand.”

 

The Bangkok Post wrote: “It’s not difficult to figure out why men such as Bout, along with international freedom fighters, terrorists and smugglers of drugs and people have a tendency to fall in love with the splendour of Bangkok. After all, we have lax financial regulations, dubious immigration regulations and plenty of outlets for top mafia bosses to lie low and be entertained in all sorts of ways.”

 

What’s this all got to do with you?

 

We’re not telling you that all fugitive people are bad people. But take the case of American John Mark Karr, who taught English in Bangkok and falsely confessed in 2006 to murdering JonBenet Ramsey, the Colorado girl whose death made headlines in 1996.

 

Karr “was sort of a tripwire” for the Thai government to improve surveillance of foreigners, said Michael Turner, a spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Bangkok.

 

Since the Karr-incident it has become a little more difficult for foreigners to stay in Thailand.

 

The kingdom’s new Education Act governing private schools, taking effect on July 12th, 2008, requires new foreign teachers to even have a letter of their old university confirming an impeccable “origin.”

 

Not only bothersome for job seekers.

 

The more Thailand’s generosity is abused, the more your own freedoms will go down the drain.

 

Let’s clean up the place - what? Where to begin?!