Thai police have arrested 18 people, including three celebrities, and seized luxury sports cars and millions of dollars in connection with a pyramid scheme selling health and dietary supplements, officers said Thursday.
The arrests came after more than 1,000 people filed online fraud allegations against The iCon Group, a company they said had lured them into buying products and making financial commitments.
The company's founder and CEO, Warathaphon "Boss Paul" Waratyaworrakul, was detained on Wednesday along with a top TV host and an actress who had allegedly helped convince victims to join the scheme.
Authorities said they had frozen 125 million baht (US$3.8 million) held in the bank accounts of the company's four executives and confiscated luxury vehicles including Porsches and Ford Mustangs.
Police were looking into bank accounts and cash transfers linked to the suspects to find out if any more people were involved, Thailand's police chief Kitrat Phanphet told reporters.
The company allegedly lured its victims by offering cheap online sales courses.
Once enrolled, it coerced them into making further purchases and financial commitments ranging from 2,500 baht to 250,000 baht (US$7,500) which was used to advertise for new recruits.
Some of the victims – who ranged from low-income workers to a high-earning footballer – had paid more than 600,000 baht to the company, according to local media. Police are yet to tally the total amount swindled.
Thailand is no stranger to public fraud cases. A "Forex-3D" scheme last year tricked thousands into investing in a fake foreign exchange trading platform.
The world's longest non-life sentence, according to the "Guinness Book of Records", was imposed on Thai pyramid scheme fraudster Chamoy Thipyaso, who was jailed for 141,078 years in 1989.
However she was released after only eight years behind bars despite having conned some members of the royal household.