4 ms·

Ask HN: How would expose a scam involving a powerful figure?

12 points by soueuls 1y ago

I will try to keep this short, happy to give more details if people are interested. In March 2022, my mother got scammed after she bought an apartment in Thailand. She just wanted to have a simple and peaceful retirement. I had done a decent amount of research on the company, we signed the contract in front of a lawyer, etc. Everything seemed OK, the company was created several years, the CEO did not have any bad reputation. It took me a while to realize it was a shell company, the CEO was not using her real name, she was the wife of a famous scammer and her father is a former minister of education in Thailand. He has been a long time member of parliament as well. Hence, why nobody ever got in jail. I know I have little chance of winning legally, thus I am considering fighting through the press / technology. Even worse, my mother is not alone, there are thousands of victims : Americans, Chinese, Koreans, Russians, British, Australians, Japanese, Germans, French (like us), as well as a few Thais (and probably more). The scam is worth between 20 and 50 millions USD, and I don't have any reasons to believe it cannot happen again. Sadly, for my mother, she is a factory worker, who just turned 60 years, even if I work as a software engineer in France, I don't think I can save money fast enough to offer her a decent retirement. I don't want to give up on her, and I spent countless hours trying to track down how the scammer got away, hence that's how I got to know who's powerful politician is behind it. My two questions would be : 1. If you were in my shoes, can you think of any creative ideas to take the battle online? And get as much exposure as possible? My rationale is as follows : real estate is not a liquid asset, it's hard to build such a fraud in a foreign country, and his network / power depends on Thailand. So hurting his reputation might prompt him to come to the table, negotiating. If not, I can at least save a few potential victims in the future. One strategy I thought about is getting enough exposure on his name / company / brand. Then pay some people to pretend they are potential investors, only to have them back off from the deal because they found out online, he was a scammer. The idea being to instill the poison of doubt and make him wonder how much more money he is losing without knowing. 2. Do you know any journalists, ambassadors, or content creator with an audience from any of those countries who would be willing to write about this? I can provide countless hard evidences, documents and OSINT I have done myself. I am willing to pay anyone who is willing to spend 30 minutes looking at the documents, and only publish it if they find the evidences convincing and are willing to expose a powerful family. My mother is a factory worker, she worked all her life, we do not have any plan B. I am not asking for any money, but there are thousands of victims, and the scammer is free to continue, because most victims choose to remain silent because of the repressive Thai law about defamation.