A scam, or a confidence trick, is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using a combination of the victim's credulity, naivety, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have defined confidence tricks as "a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct ... intending to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial", as they "benefit con operators at the expense of their victims ".
Chiang Mai is the largest city in northern Thailand, the capital of Chiang Mai province and the second largest city in Thailand. It is 700 km (435 mi) north of Bangkok in a mountainous region called the Thai highlands and has a population of 1.2 million people as of 2022, which is more than 66 percent of the total population of Chiang Mai province.
Phishing is a form of social engineering and a scam where attackers deceive people into revealing sensitive information or installing malware such as viruses, worms, adware, or ransomware. Phishing attacks have become increasingly sophisticated and often transparently mirror the site being targeted, allowing the attacker to observe everything while the victim navigates the site, and transverses any additional security boundaries with the victim. As of 2020, it is the most common type of cybercrime, with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reporting more incidents of phishing than any other type of cybercrime.
Medical tourism is the practice of traveling abroad to obtain medical treatment. In the past, this usually referred to those who traveled from less-developed countries to major medical centers in highly developed countries for treatment unavailable at home. However, in recent years it may equally refer to those from developed countries who travel to developing countries for lower-priced medical treatments. With differences between the medical agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the European Medicines Agency (EMA), etc., which decide whether a drug is approved in their country or region, or not, the motivation may be also for medical services unavailable or non-licensed in the home country.
Pattaya is a city in Eastern Thailand, the second-largest city in Chonburi province and the eighth-largest city in Thailand. It is on the east coast of the Gulf of Thailand, about 100 kilometres (62 mi) southeast of Bangkok, and has a population of 328,961 as of 2021.
Email fraud is intentional deception for either personal gain or to damage another individual using email as the vehicle. Almost as soon as email became widely used, it began to be used as a means to defraud people, just as telephony and paper mail were used by previous generations.
A high-yield investment program (HYIP) is a type of Ponzi scheme, an investment scam that promises unsustainably high return on investment by paying previous investors with the money invested by new investors.
The gem scam is a confidence trick performed usually against tourists. The most known version occurs in Bangkok, Thailand as well as other cities in the country. It is one of the most pervasive scams in Thailand. Most of the shops are gold or jewelry shops. The marks tend to be tourists from outside Thailand. It has been alleged that this scam has been operating for the past 20 years, sometimes in the same premises. It has been suggested that individuals in the Royal Thai Police and even politicians protect this scam. The scam was demonstrated on an episode of the BBC series The Real Hustle and in a Scam City episode in Bangkok. Also in other countries such as Turkey and Sri Lanka, the trick is performed in various versions.
PTT Public Company Limited or simply PTT is a Thai state-owned SET-listed oil and gas company. Formerly known as the Petroleum Authority of Thailand, it owns extensive submarine gas pipelines in the Gulf of Thailand, a network of LPG terminals throughout the kingdom, and it is involved in electricity generation, petrochemical products, oil and gas exploration and production, and gasoline retailing businesses. The company also owns Café Amazon, a popular coffee chain throughout South East Asia, which shops are often located next to PTT gas stations or inside malls.
The Royal Thai Police (RTP) is the national police force of Thailand. The RTP employs between 210,700 and 230,000 officers, roughly 17 percent of all civil servants. The RTP is frequently recognized as the fourth armed force of Thailand since their tradition, concept, culture, skill, and training are relatively similar to the army and most of their officer cadets need to graduate from the Armed Forces Academies Preparatory School before entering the Royal Thai Police Cadet Academy. Officers also undergo paramilitary training similar to the army but with an additional focus on law enforcement.
Thai Indians are Thai people with full or partial Indian ancestry. But these ancestral ties are usually left out of statistics. About 65,000 Indian Thais have full Thai citizenship, but around 400,000 persons of Indian origin settled in Thailand mainly in the urban cities. Intermixing and interethnic marriages of the earlier migrants have led to a large indigenous Thai Indian community.
The Thai zig zag scam is a confidence trick where one is falsely accused of shoplifting, and then held by police, or those claiming to be police, until "bail" is paid for the alleged theft. At times those fleeced are shown faked closed-circuit television footage as corroboration. In several cases in Thailand, this confidence trick has occurred at the airport, and thus is sometimes called the "Thai airport scam". Most reports of this scam are dated.
Human trafficking is a major and complex societal issue in Myanmar, which is both a source and destination for human trafficking. Both major forms of human trafficking, namely forced labor and forced prostitution, are common in the country, affecting men, women, and children. Myanmar's systemic political and economic problems have made the Burmese people particularly vulnerable to trafficking. Men, women, and children who migrate abroad to Thailand, Malaysia, China, Bangladesh, India, and South Korea for work are often trafficked into conditions of forced or bonded labor or commercial sexual exploitation. Economic conditions within Myanmar have led to the increased legal and illegal migration of citizens regionally and internationally, often to destinations as far from Myanmar as the Middle East. The border regions of Myanmar, including Shwe Kokko, are known human trafficking destinations.
Crime in Thailand has been a defining issue in the country for decades, inspiring years of policy and international criticism. Drug use and corruption make up the majority of the crime in Thailand and due to this, many Thai administrations attempted to curtail the drug trade, most notably Thaksin Shinawatra with the 2003 War on Drugs. Since 2003 crime has been decreasing with the crime rate decreasing from 9.97 to 2.58. Despite this, juvenile delinquency has been increasing in recent years.
Corruption in Thailand is a national issue. Thai law provides criminal penalties for conviction of official corruption. Thailand's 2014 military junta, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), stated that fighting corruption would be one of its main focus points, a common practice for military dictatorships following Thailand's frequent military coups. Despite the promises, officials engaged in corrupt practices with impunity, and the NCPO engaged in corrupt practices itself.
Street food in Thailand brings together various offerings of ready-to-eat meals, snacks, fruits and drinks sold by hawkers or vendors at food stalls or food carts on the street side in Thailand. Sampling Thai street food is a popular activity for visitors, as it offers a taste of Thai cooking traditions. Bangkok is often mentioned as one of the best places for street food. In 2012, VirtualTourist named Bangkok as the number one spot for street food—the city is notable for both its variety of offerings and the abundance of street hawkers.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand began with the identification of the first case in the country on 13 January 2020, and has been ongoing since then.
Following is a list of events and scheduled events in the year 2023 in Thailand. The year 2023 is reckoned as the year 2566 in Buddhist Era, the Thai calendar.
A fraud factory, fraud park or scam compound is a collection of large fraud organizations usually involved in human trafficking operations, generally found in Southeast Asia and usually operated by a criminal gang. Fraud factory operators lure foreign nationals to scam hubs, where they are forced into modern slavery, to scam internet users around the world into fraudulently buying cryptocurrencies or withdrawing cash via social media and online dating apps. A typical scam is known as "pig butchering". Trafficked victims' passports are confiscated, and they are threatened with organ harvesting and forced prostitution if they do not successfully scam sufficiently. Fraud factory operations proliferated in Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and other countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and were further aided by the civil war in Myanmar.
