A fraudster sentenced to 13,275 years in prison will only serve 20 years of it.

 A Thai fraudster sentenced to 13,275 years in prison is expected to serve only two decades for his crime. Pudit Kittithradilok, 34, was imprisoned for failing to return investments to those who put money into his business. He admitted to running a Ponzi scheme in which investors were promised high financial returns, which turned out to be false.

Around 40,000 people were persuaded to invest in his company, pouring over £120 million into his network of businesses. The courts ruled that he had engaged in illegal lending, and he was charged with 2,653 counts of fraud. However, because he confessed to his crimes, his colossal sentence was reduced in half to a still hefty 6,637 years and six months. Despite the large number, Kittithradilok is unlikely to be imprisoned for more than 20 years. This is due to Thai law, which stipulates a maximum of ten years in prison for each of the two crimes for which he was found guilty. Prosecutors told the court how Kittithradilok had gotten away with his crimes until now, saying he had organized a series of seminars in which attendees were encouraged to invest their savings in his pair of businesses. He claimed that the businesses were interested in property development, beauty, car trades and experts, and other things, but these assertions were false.

Kittithradilok, according to the Bangkok Post, promised investors large returns and incentives for introducing new members to the scheme. The goal of these new cash injections, as with most pyramid schemes, would be to pay off the earlier investors, and so on and so forth. Kittithradilok has been held in Bangkok Remand Prison since his arrest in 2017, after being denied bail in August of that year. The court ruled that his two businesses should be fined $20 million each, leaving him and his companies to repay $17 million plus 7.5 percent annual interest to the victims named. Following his 20-year sentence, the conman is scheduled to be released in 2037. According to PwC's Thailand Economic Crime and Fraud Survey 2020, financial crime has decreased in recent years, beginning in 2018. Despite the fact that the website states: "This could imply that fraudsters are winning the war by adapting their methods and utilizing new technologies to circumvent defenses. As a result, we believe that much fraud is going unnoticed."

By Covenantblog