Company executives jailed 120,945 years each for public fraud

The public fraud lawsuits were filed against Blisher Inter Group Co, former executive Angsunee Pattananithi, former co-founder and shareholder Panjawan Benjamasmongkol, former co-founder and salesman Saengthong Saekim, and former Silom branch manager Annop Kulsawet as the 1-5 defendant respectively.

The court was told that the defendants had conspired to fraud 24,189 people thus initially sentenced the second, forth and fifth defendants to a 120,945-year imprisonment each and acquitted the first and third defendants due to lack of convincing evidence against them.

The court then lowered that punishment for the punished defendants to a 20-year jail term each, while the fifth defendant Aannop was also sentenced in a separate drug-related case to a 17-year imprisonment.

The lawsuit filed since August 1994 stated that from the year 1992 to 1993, Blisher Inter Group Co had advertised for public members to buy tour packages via two types of member cards.

One was a silver card with Bt30,000 membership fee plus Bt2,500 additional fees per year and the other a gold card with Bt60,000 membership fee plus Bt4,500 additional fees per year.

In addition of some 20 privileges, the members could stay at a hotel or resort free-of-charge for four days and four nights per year for 20 years.

The company and its executives were sentenced by the Central Bankruptcy Court in February 2003 to go bankrupt due to the higher-than-legal-interest-rate-limit payment promised to members in case they found for the firm new customers.

The Criminal Court heard a plaintiff Wijan Saebae testified that the four defendants had convinced him and 40-50 others to apply for the membership cards without informing them about the additional fees they must pay or they would not receive any privilege advertised. Learnt later that they were fooled, they filed complaints to the authority.

Besides, other damaged persons also filed complaints that the firm never returned Bt4,000 per year in case the member did not use the tour package, as they had promised when advertising the packages.

The Nation