WISE GUYS IN! SUCKERS IN,THEN OUT PENNILESS
THE THAI IMMIGRATION POLICE’S ‘GOOD GUYS IN – BAD GUYS OUT’ CAMPAIGN IS NOT FLOUNDERING. IT NEVER STARTED!
While Thailand’s current military dictatorship is running on a ‘end corruption’ ticket there are signs that corruption in Thailand is rising to a new peak and the people the military are arresting seem to be in areas where uniformed men have prospective interests.
Who cannot remember the day in 2012 when two wise guys from Essex were nabbed after trying to drag away ATM machines from banks in Chonburi? They were Alex Milbourn,25, and Shaun Tracey, 24 and the truck they used was owned by Alex’s dad John Leslie Milbourn, now 63.
The story ran in the Bangkok Post and the PattayaDailyNews which described the thieves in a headline as ‘Dumb and Dumber’.
It seemed they were going to jail for a long time.
Alex and Shaun came straight out the backdoor not long after General Panya Mamen gave his press conference .
They (Alex did not even have a visa for Thailand) walked away scot free, but most likely a lot poorer, which was why I guess they had to start up property and rent-a-car businesses in Pattaya.
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It is here that they followed in the footsteps of Richard Haughton, the former Pattaya Rotary Club President who ran Thailand Property and Media Exhibition Company (TPME Ltd) and Harlequin (Thailand), who in turn learned his business from David Ames, the Harlequin supremo now awaiting trial for fraud in the UK.
Haughton offered for sale houses that were never built, and the ones that were built, he mortgaged the title deeds, without telling the foreign buyers what he was doing – so the buyers were buying a massive debt.
It seems in the case of the Milbourns that they had a special relationship with Pattaya police. We know of course Thai police will not investigate foreigner on foreigner fraud, but in the case of the Milbourns I have a report that when people actually complained to police they were threatened with deportation.
But then they ended up in a place they called ‘Brentwood Manor’ in Pattaya, which they tried to build a moat around. It did not fill with water so they tried to water-proof it -and waited for the rain.
They eventually settled for a pool like normal people.
One guy, who had disputes over money for a house-build, reports that he found 50 Thai workers with pick-axes outside his door.
When the military men said they were going to clean up Pattaya perhaps they meant they were going to ‘clean up in Pattaya’.
Alex Milbourn’s father is known in the UK as a man who ran with Eddie ‘King Cone’ Blundell, whose speciality was ripping off foreigners in London. He took over the central London ice cream trade essentially by force and intimidation and then went on to run a car clamping business. The victims had to pay £600 to get their cars back.
Eddie Blundell later wrote his biography ‘Top Drawer Villain’ but he was decidedly bottom drawer.
Recently the Milbourn’s relocated from Thailand back to Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, after private criminal cases were issued against them, but before the warrants of arrest could be obtained. They said they were going back to the UK on holiday and Alex took with him Harvey, his son by his Thai wife.
They have not returned and the mother, not surprisingly is distraught. But John Leslie Milbourn has an estate agency to look after in the UK.
What did they do to garner two arrest warrants? Well they used to rent out property on behalf of foreigners who had bought in Thailand as an investment, or lived in the country only a few months a year.
In this case they convinced a leaseholder to buy the freehold in a company name. They then forged his signature on a power of attorney and went along to the land office and transferred the property to themselves.
Then they took a 10 million baht loan off the property through dodgy Pattaya loan sharks with no intention of paying it back (something the loan sharks seemed to understand).
The owner of the property has discovered, not surprisingly, that the courts are ruling in favour of the loan sharks.
WARNING: A WIDE RANGE OF PROPERTIES IN PATTAYA AND HUA HIN ARE BEING OFFERED AT THE MOMENT EITHER COMPLETED OR NEAR COMPLETED. MANY OF THESE PROPERTIES ARE ON LAND WHICH IS NOT OWNED BY THE DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, OR HAVE LOANS ATTACHED TO THE PROPERTY DEEDS (CHANOTES). BUYER BEWARE.