Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing "Big Joke" yet again. That is Police General Surachate "Big Joke" Hakparn and well this has been a person we have followed pretty frequently since going back to him being the Head of Thai Immigration where he made quite a few, well quite a few changes within Thai Immigration that had a pretty massive impact on Expats and we have kind of kept track of him since then. The reason for the video or the reason I thought of making the video is I was reading a recent article from the Thai Examiner, that is thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: Frenchman held in Bangkok for extorting money from foreigners in Pattaya claiming police links. Interesting article; as usual with Thai Examiner, a lot of information in here. I urge those who are watching this video go read that for yourself, a lot of good info. I am going to quote a couple of excerpts here. Quoting directly: "Big Joke or Deputy National Police Chief General Surachate Hakparn urged foreign residents and tourists in Thailand not to be afraid to report anyone claiming links with the police, who attempted to extort money or coerce others with the threat of police action. The top Police Officer urged anyone concerned to phone 24-hour police hotline numbers." Quoting further: "Deputy Police Chief General Surachate Hakparn has urged anyone and particularly foreign residents in Thailand or tourists to avail of police hotline numbers to report any incidences of attempted extortion by individuals claiming to have power within the Police Force seeking 'protection money'. The Top Cop made the appeal this week as he announced the arrest of a French national, a former police volunteer in the resort city of Pattaya, wanted by the City's Courts for fraud, coercion and extortion of fellow foreign residents and tourists." Quoting further, and this I thought was interesting, "He" (and "he" here is Big Joke””) "He called on the media to promote the message that if anybody feels threatened or intimidated by any party pretending or holding themselves out as having links or influence with Police Officers to contact the proper authorities and report such incidents."

This is kind of a phenomenon that goes back take aways unfortunately here in Thailand. I remember hearing about some of these kinds of scams years ago. People would say "Oh, I have connections with the police; this, that and the other thing", there have been various reports of this happening. Primarily, I shouldn't say primarily, but the times I have heard about it in the most frequency, I have heard about it occurring in Bangkok and other places up country with less frequency. I have heard about it a lot in the Eastern Economic Corridor in the past. By a lot I am not saying every other week or minute or anything like that, but it seemed like you would kind of hear a weird story like this about once a year or something like this would kind of pop up or percolate up into the media and you would kind of hear something like this about a foreigner claiming police connections and then therefore they are going to basically use those connections to "shake" people down here in Thailand, essentially extort money here and it's an unfortunate scam is all it really is; it's a scam. I have personally never witnessed the Thai Police ever acting like this and frankly anybody that claims "police connections" and then immediately turns around and tries to extort you, which is an illegal activity, that should be something that should give you pause. Quite honestly, I am really glad that General Surachate Hakparn or "Big Joke" has kind of targeted this activity and said "hey look, this isn't the way it works here", and if a foreigner is running around acting like this, it's a good idea to go ahead and contact relevant authorities because it is criminal activity at the end of the day. 

So interesting that this is coming up now but it is certainly good news and we will keep you posted on this channel if anything further is reported as the situation evolves.