Thailand's Criminal Court has cleared actress Savika "Pinky" Chaiyadej and two family members in one of the kingdom's largest investment fraud cases, marking a significant development in the sprawling Forex-3D prosecution that has ensnared over two dozen defendants. The court's decision on Thursday pronounced guilt against five other accused, including former scheme executive Apiruk Kothi, and imposed combined nominal sentences totalling 49,110 years alongside a financial restitution order of 4.911 billion baht.
The ruling represents a pivotal moment in a case that has captivated Thai public attention due to its scale and the involvement of entertainment industry figures. The acquittal of Chaiyadej and her relatives — her mother Sarinya Chaiyadej and brother Kittichet, formerly known as Sarayut Chaiyadej — suggests the court found insufficient evidence to establish their culpability beyond reasonable doubt in what prosecutors characterised as a coordinated criminal enterprise. Both her mother and brother were brought from Bangkok Remand Prison to attend the verdict reading, which commenced at 9am at the Criminal Court on Ratchadaphisek Road.
The Forex-3D operation represents a cautionary tale of financial deception that deceived nearly ten thousand individuals across Thailand. Between November 2015 and September 2020, the alleged fraudsters promoted their scheme through a dedicated website and multiple Facebook pages, presenting themselves as operators of a legitimate online foreign-exchange trading platform. Promotional materials promised investors access to teams of professional traders who would manage their funds, requiring no previous market experience or knowledge. The scheme initially sought minimum investments of US$500 (approximately 15,000 baht at the time), later escalating this requirement to US$2,000 (roughly 50,000 baht), with the highest tier requiring US$40,000 for access to purported premium trading benefits.
The core promise that attracted victims was deceptively simple yet powerful: investors could deposit funds and passively accumulate returns, with operators guaranteeing complete recovery of principal investment. Marketing materials suggested that participants would receive 60 to 80 percent of profits generated through foreign-exchange transactions conducted on their behalf. In reality, prosecutors contend that the defendants operated no genuine forex trading business whatsoever, instead channelling investor deposits through a pyramid-like structure that rewarded recruitment over actual financial returns. The Department of Special Investigation later documented that 9,842 people collectively invested more than 2.489 billion baht into the scheme.
During court proceedings, Chaiyadej maintained that her involvement was strictly that of a regular investor with no broader participation in the fraudulent enterprise. She consistently denied recruiting participants or receiving payments for referring new members to the scheme — key allegations that prosecutors would need to establish to convict her on the primary charges. Her legal position proved persuasive enough for the court to grant acquittal, suggesting the bench determined that available evidence could not prove her active involvement in the criminal conspiracy. Chaiyadej initially faced detention at the Central Women's Correctional Institution but secured conditional release in November 2022 after a 5 million baht bail was posted, subject to restrictions including a Thailand travel ban and mandatory monthly court appearances.
The investigation that ultimately led to charges began when the Department of Special Investigation formally accepted Forex-3D complaints as a special case in 2019, responding to thousands of victim reports. Authorities later obtained an arrest warrant for Apiruk in March 2020, successfully apprehending him at a condominium in Bangkok's affluent Thonglor district on January 15, 2021. The arrest yielded significant assets including a Lamborghini vehicle, banking records, a mobile telephone, luxury watches and other valuables, all seized as proceeds of the alleged fraud. The Bank of Thailand subsequently confirmed that Forex-3D had never received the mandatory Finance Ministry licence required to conduct legal foreign-exchange trading operations, rendering the entire enterprise an unlawful financial service from inception.
The complexity of the Forex-3D investigation produced multiple prosecution tracks involving different categories of alleged perpetrators. The original case against Apiruk and four associates was eventually consolidated with a later indictment filed against nineteen additional defendants in August 2022, including Chaiyadej and her family members. This consolidation expanded the joint trial to encompass twenty-four accused persons facing identical charges of collectively borrowing money through public fraud and violating Thailand's Computer Crime Act. The nominal sentence of 49,110 years assigned to the five convicted defendants represents the mathematical sum of penalties across thousands of individual criminal counts rather than the actual time they will serve.
Thailand's criminal justice system applies statutory limitations to such nominal sentences through Section 91 of the Criminal Code. A precedent was established in a separate Forex-3D prosecution concluded in December 2024, where three defendants received nominal sentences of 49,125 years for 9,825 separate offences, only to have those terms capped at the maximum twenty-year effective sentence. That same December ruling also acquitted celebrity singer Suteewan "Baitoey" Kunchorn, her former husband Pattanapon "DJ Man" Minthakhin and Singaporean Daryl Cai Yonghui in related proceedings, demonstrating that acquittals have not been unusual even among high-profile defendants.
The Forex-3D case underscores persistent vulnerabilities in Thailand's retail investment market and the challenges regulators face in preventing large-scale financial fraud schemes. The operation successfully exploited investors' desires for passive income and professional wealth management, marketing itself through modern digital channels that provided a veneer of legitimacy while the underlying business model remained entirely fraudulent. The use of tiered investment structures and recruitment incentives created network effects that accelerated victim acquisition, allowing the scheme to accumulate massive funds before regulatory intervention.
For Malaysian and broader Southeast Asian audiences, the Forex-3D prosecution carries important implications regarding cross-border investment risks and the tactics employed by fraudulent operators. Similar schemes have targeted investors throughout the region, often exploiting language barriers and regulatory gaps between jurisdictions. The involvement of entertainment personalities in promoting investment products — whether through deliberate deception or inadvertent participation — represents a pattern observed in multiple regional fraud cases, suggesting that public figure endorsements warrant heightened scrutiny from both authorities and potential investors.
The acquittal of Chaiyadej demonstrates that courts are willing to distinguish between peripheral and central participants in large criminal conspiracies, particularly when evidence of direct involvement in fraudulent promotion or fund misappropriation remains insufficient. The five convicted defendants will face the practical application of Thailand's sentencing framework, which may reduce their nominal 49,110-year terms to a more manageable duration while preserving substantial financial liability to victims. The restitution order of 4.911 billion baht suggests the court has calculated compensation expectations, though recovering such sums from defendants' remaining assets will likely prove challenging given the apparent dissipation of scheme proceeds.
