BUT HE IS ONE OF BANGKOK’S BOILER ROOM KINGS!
While many foreigners, some believed to be innocent and framed, get jailed for up to 50 years for drugs offences in Thailand, for share-dealing conmen it appears to be okay if you know the right police. Andrew Drummond highlights how a ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ type conman not only got away with drugs offences twice –but also with the killing of two Thais while ‘under the influence’.
A Bangkok boiler room boss who got away with killing two Thai citizens while driving, it’s claimed, under the influence of crystal methamphetamines in Pattaya has secretly been released from jail in Bangkok, along with his aide, after he was caught again with ice and heroin.
Frank Giannini, 51, from Montreal, Canada, and Shahid O’Connor, have been released from Bombat Prison in Bangkok, part of the Yard Lao Complex, despite being arrested in an operation triggered by the United States Drugs Enforcement Administration after a whistle-blower contacted this website.
Their release makes a mockery of international police co-operation.
It also make the Thai authorities complicit in international fraud on a massive scale. Bangkok’s famous boiler rooms, operated by modern day Jordan Belforts (the subject of the film ‘Wolf of Wall Street’) are taking people down for millions worldwide.
The investigation was conducted by the now totally discredited Crime Suppression and in particular Division One but it was doomed before it began. In charge of the operation was Police Colonel Akkharawut Limrat.
Colonel Akkaharat ‘fell from a high place to his death’ during a recent clean out of the CSD and Central Investigation Bureau, which was directly connected to the recent divorce by Thailand’s Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn of his wife Princess Srirasmi.
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| Lat Krabang house – and boiler room |
Giannini and O’Conner were arrested at Giannini’s boiler room (illegal share trading office) in Lat Krabang on the outskirts of Bangkok last July. Their arrest came after American Justin Philip Bean appealed to this site to help him – as he claimed he was trapped in the boiler room with no money and no passport (It was being held by Giannini).
This information was passed on to the US DEA as drugs were involved, but US authorities were also aware of the boiler room or Wolf of Wall Street connection and were interested in Giannini’s computers.
CSD Police raided a house in Lat Krabang from information given by Philip Bean – and there they found Giannini and O’Connor plus quantities of ice and heroin which they picked up on daily runs. They took away with them the contents of the safe and at least 12 hard discs.
But the hard discs were returned to Giannini without examination and now it appears their prison detention was also a sham.
Philip Bean, far from being treated as a valuable informant was threatened at the CSD headquarters – and later when he checked in at Suvarnabhumi airport to return to the Philippines where he had answered an advertisement for a salesman in Thailand, he was shaken down by police, deprived of most of his cash, and warned not to come back to Thailand again.
In 2010 Giannini was arrested in Pattaya having crashed over a roundabout and then turned in the wrong direction to face the traffic. He collided with a baht-bus killing the driver and a woman passenger.
Pattaya One reported at the time:
“Mr. Giannini was arrested by police at the scene, who suspected he was heavily intoxicated. Inside his badly damaged vehicle were two women he had just met at a bar.
Mr. Giannini claimed he was from Bangkok and was unaware of the roundabout and upon inspection of the vehicle, drug taking paraphernalia was found in the car which included items commonly used to ingest Crystal Methamphetamine, commonly known as “Ice”.
Just how he got away with that has yet to be explained but it never even got to court, so a financial deal must have been involved – but he is not the only very lucky ‘boiler room boss’.
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| Bullard – died in Chiang Mai this week |
Just a few days prior to Giannini’s arrest by the Crime Suppression Division, the same unit carried out a search, at the request of the DEA, of boiler room boss Glen Bullard’s home in Chiang Mai. The operation was an embarrassing failure, nothing was found, and soon Bullard was knocking at the door of the CSD to complain together with a lawyer from Tilleke & Gibbens.
James Muller, the American boss of Foreign Currency International, aka, Global Option Trading, was actually extradited back from the United States in 2003 on a charge of conspiring to murder New Zealander Ian Travis (his partner in the boiler room business).
Shortly after his return Muller was not doing time in a prison exercise yard, but running his own Martial Arts studio in Sukhumvit 31.
He was never prosecuted for the murder but was instead charged with minor offences including illegally running an unlicensed brokerage.
The gunman pictured in this reconstruction (right) claimed that he hit was ordered by Muller’s wife.
But then again that is what police said and what police say is not always very reliable.
Speaking of Giannini’s release Philip Bean said last night:
Phillip Bean “Yes. I have been told of the release. The CSD operation with me was a sham. They were not interested in boiler rooms, but had me accompany them on the raid of another boiler room run by a guy called ‘Paki Peter’ in Sukhumvit Suites in Sukhumvit Soi 13. I was recognized during that raid. I believe that was the sole reason I was brought along. Police said they could not find the place alone, but they deliberately put my own life in danger. Go figure.”
Giannini’s Pattaya Car Crash
COMMENT: In all probability the Crime Suppression Division have been allowing international share trading operations – boiler rooms – to swindle money out of people worldwide for more than 15 years. I remember being passed from officer to officer, starting with General Panya Mamen (of Koh Tao murder fame) who was in charge at the time and finding universal evasiveness in regard to a raid on a house in off Thonglor, Bangkok. Time and time again I am reminded there are good Thai police. Perhaps it’s time for them to stand up and be counted. For surely the good Thai policemen should have resigned by now.
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The entire Royal Thai Police are rotten to the core in systemic terms. Everyone knows this but for reasons I have never really understood it is meant to be a secret among the official international community and it's diplomatic representatives when dealing with the general public.
Discovering corruption among Thai officials is akin to the Pope discovering he has a balcony and bears defecate in the woods.
The country is in many ways a failed state and given the way it protects foreign criminals it is approaching rogue status. The lack of any democracy simply adds to its criminality and really, in truth, it is no more than a North Korea with lots of nice smiling, better weather and better food.
terrible story
Just when you thought it could not get any lower, a new low for the Royal Thai Police Force
Over the years when I've heard of or seen farangs in trouble, I often hear people advising victims to go to a high ranking policeman or officer in charge of the police station thinking they'll find an incorruptible Elliot Ness type. They won't and never will. They will more than likely find a bigger crook than the one they are having problems with. The Colin Vard story is the classic example of this.
The police system like everything else in Thailand runs on patronage. Positions are bought and sold. Positions with access to large graft cost more and your not going to get that job unless you kick some money upstairs to your superiors or local politicians. As you progress through the ranks you have to pay a higher price for each promotion on the grounds you will have access to bigger pay-offs.
The lower ranked police who are not officers are often no more than bag men and bribe collectors for their higher ranked superiors who take the lions share of all graft to live like emperors and pay for the next promotion . Many work as bodyguards for local warlords when off duty or have a cushy part-time gig at a business owned by one of their patrons. The officer ranks are like mafia families grouped together according to what class there were in at cadet school. Loyalty comes from allegiances made early in careers and many stick together until retirement.
No reform can be made as the people who would have to instigate it are corrupt themselves. Recent arrests shows the CSD was rotten to the core. They were taking a cut of every illegal action going and we're supposed to believe they were just a few rotten apples? The whole Thai police force is corrupt from top to bottom. They can however catch crooks if they want to. They have the contacts and know exactly what is going on. They lock up the poor but anybody with enough money can subvert justice. Money is what determines justice in Thailand. Justice is for sale like everything else in this dysfunctional system.
Andrew, can you please stop glamourising these people, surely Bastards of Bangkok would be more suitable than the Hollywood connected term you use so often?
You forgot to mention that Muller did get a few years and, I believe, he is still locked up.