This is a transcript of PM broadcast at 1800 AEST on local radio.
Six Australians held over Thai scam
PM - Friday, July 27, 2001 6:40
MARK COLVIN: Now to the dramatic raid in Bangkok involving an alleged telephone market scam that has resulted in the arrest of more than 100 people including six Australians.
THAI POLICEMAN: May I have your attention, please. Everyone - can you move into the middle isle, right here now. Everyone get up from the chair. Stand in single file. We want to see your ID, your passport or any other type of your photo ID, okay? Standing in isle. Get up from the chairs, please. Cooperate with us and everything will be fine. Please cooperate with us. We have the court order to come and search the place.
Okay, so right here is the joint cooperation between the Royal Thai Police, the Anti-Money Laundering Office, the Department of Labour and also the FBI, US Customs and Australian Federal Police. So please cooperate with us.
And so we'll start here. One gentleman at a time has to come with your ID. For those who have not any single ID, we're sorry - we have to take you.
MARK COLVIN: Six Australians were among those detained in Bangkok in that raid on an unlicensed investment sales business. As you just heard, Australian Federal Police alongside the FBI played a part.
The raid is believed to have uncovered a massive telephone marketing scheme thought to have enticed at least 100 Australians, among others, into buying dodgy shares.
Our South East Asia correspondent, Geoff Thompson, joins us from Bangkok.
This cold-calling share marketing. How does it work?
GEOFF THOMPSON: Well the way it works, Mark, is that foreign nationals are recruited from overseas - from Britain, Ireland and Australia, the United States - they're brought to Bangkok. They sometimes have to hand in their passports to the people that are employing them and then they sit there and follow a formula of ringing up usually middle-income earning people living in rural regional areas without a lot of experience of the share market, particularly in Australia, and they apply boiler-room tactics - that is high pressure selling tactics - to sell these shares. But there's serious question marks over whether these shares actually ever, you know, garner any returns.
MARK COLVIN: So it's like one of these call centre operations, and there's nothing wrong with that as such - the problem is that the shares they're selling may not exist?
GEOFF THOMPSON: That's correct. That's correct. What they allege is that these shares don't exist. In fact the companies are often unlicensed. They open one day doing business and by the time it comes round to sort of trying to get some return on the so called investment, the business has closed down and the money is never seen again.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission, you know, claims that, you know, it's from $10,000 up to a quarter of a million dollars has been lost by individual investors in Australia on these scams and they've been going on for a couple of years now. They've have a relatively low profile because they've managed to keep out of the public eye, not just in Thailand but also in Philippines and other South East Asian nations as well.
MARK COLVIN: But wouldn't you have to be fairly naive to cough up your money to somebody who's asking you to send it to Bangkok, or did they not say they were asking for it to be sent to Bangkok?
GEOFF THOMPSON: No. They were sending it off into accounts elsewhere, often off-shore accounts. I think there may even be - I'm not sure about this - there may even be accounts, legitimate accounts, in Australia and elsewhere, I don't know. But I don't think they were necessarily directly saying that they were sending them to Bangkok. In fact some of the documents that we've sighted have said that you know, they were saying they were calling from New York and they were investing in the New York stock market.
So, it's not necessarily the case that people, you know, think they're sending money off to the Philippines or Bangkok.
MARK COLVIN: And do we know who was at the centre of this? We know that six Australians were arrested. Were they just part of the call centre or were they among the ringleaders?
GEOFF THOMPSON: Well, I'm yet to confirm this. I won't name any names at this stage but I think an Australian is regarded as being the man who was running this business in Bangkok. So it's unclear yet who is really the brains behind the boiler room, so to speak, but certainly Australians have been detained and it's possible that some of those people were quite high ranking in the organisation.
MARK COLVIN: And if it involved the Thai authorities, the American authorities and the Australian authorities, where are they going to be charged and under what justice system are they going to be brought to book?
GEOFF THOMPSON: Well as I understand it they're actually going to be charged in Thailand. There were suggestions that the arrested people be discharged on visa restrictions - I think they're using that to hold them - but certainly there has been some quotes from the stock exchange here in Thailand that says that they will be charged under money laundering and, you know, stock exchange legislation.
MARK COLVIN: Geoff Thompson in Bangkok, thank you for that.
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