Stickman Readers' Submissions September 14th, 2006

Shafted Thai Woman?

This FR is based on a late-night excursion in January, 2006.
I wrote to you some time ago with a cautionary tale about my then Thai wife and her callous deceit (Shafted Welshman). Briefly, we were living in Wales as a happily married couple, but behind my back she was leading a double life supporting her Thai boyfriend, a penniless musician and part-time pimp from Pattaya, with my hard earned cash.


I eventually found out about her shenanigans, when she was away in Pattaya setting up a bar business for her pimp, and I naturally finished with her. On her return to Wales from Thailand I refused to let her in my house and sent her packing. I later heard that she went to stay with a Thai friend of hers in London, who had a hair and beauty salon in Earls Court, which was really a front for a prostitution racket specialising in Asian women. It is here I suppose that she learned the skills involved in becoming a mamasan and setting up a brothel and escort business.

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Thanks to the lax immigration rules at the time she had leave to stay in the UK indefinitely and returned from London to Wales where she obliviously saw a niche in the market. In Cardiff she rented a large house and employed the services of several Asian women. They were mainly Thais (some married to unsuspecting Brits), but also Filipinas, Chinese and even the part-time services of 2 Japanese students. She placed an advertisement in the local newspaper as “Sweet Oriental Massage” and before she could say “khop khun kha” was raking in £60 to £100 per hour per girl.


From her lucrative enterprise she managed to squirrel away enough money to buy a 5 bed-roomed house in Jomtien; a small guesthouse / mansion in South Pattaya; a car rental and taxi business also in Pattaya and a townhouse in the suburbs of Bangkok. She was also flying back and forth from Thailand to the UK on a regular basis on Thai Airways business class (naturally) and making regular trips to the casinos in Cambodia and all this without having to pay a penny to HM Inland Revenue.


However, last year it all went pear-shaped for her when one of her Thai employees took exception to the way she was being treated and complained to South Wales police. At this time there was a big clamp down on foreigners working in the sex industry in Cardiff, mainly due to some high profile cases involving Eastern European people smugglers making the main BBC Wales news bulletins and the front pages of the national papers. So late one night there was a knock on her door, but this time not from a paying client seeking a quick nuat, but from the good old boys in blue and the UK Immigration service. All of the working girls that the police found in the house were Thai and in the UK illegally, some on out of date tourist visas but one woman had forged documents.

CBD bangkok


They were all, including by ex-wife, arrested. The illegal immigrants were deported back to Thailand, but my ex-wife however was in real big shit. She was not only charged with brothel keeping and money laundering offences, but also with people smuggling offences relating to the woman with the forged visa. Allegedly my ex-wife was involved in paying for and obtaining the forged visa.


During the next couple of months she was in and out of the magistrates court on a regular basis. The magistrate eventually placed her on remand and she ended up in a women’s prison in England. This must have been a huge shock for her. Although not on a par with the Bangkok Hilton, still a British prison would be a big jolt to a Thai woman’s nervous system and imagine the huge loss of face with all the other Thais who know her. About this time I had a phone call from a complete stranger who introduced himself as a friend of my ex-wife. She had had the barefaced cheek to persuade her friend to ask me if I was willing to contribute some money to a pool to bail her out of prison. I politely refused, but she was eventually bailed out and had to surrender her passport to the police and not leave the Cardiff city boundary.


After 11 months waiting her case eventually reached the Crown court last month. Unfortunately the people smuggling charge, which carries a 7 year prison sentence, was dropped because of lack of evidence. She did however pleaded guilty to the brothel and money laundering charges and in mitigation gave the gullible judge a real sob story. Declaring that she had been living on a diet of rice and water, sent all her ill-gotten gains to Thailand with the sole purpose of feeding her destitute children and sick mother as she had not received any support from her ex-husband. She failed to mention however that all her children are adults. Her youngest daughter is a 19 year old student at Thammasat university and her eldest son is nearly 30 years old with a masters degree in engineering, all the education paid for by the brothel keeping.


That woman is a consummate liar and a brilliant actress and would grace the stage in any London West End or Broadway play with her star performances. The judge was taken in by her story and she ended up with a 2 year suspended sentence, ordered to do 100 hours

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community work and had £960 confiscated from her bank account. Not a bad outcome for what the police described as £40,000 a year business?

She’ll probably be deported back to Thailand soon and good riddance, but with the state of affairs at the British Home Office who can tell. Here’s the BBC version of the affair.

Stickman's thoughts:

She is very lucky to have got away so lightly. But 40,000 pounds a year? That sounds like a drop in the bucket compared to what she was in all likelihood really making.


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