A Thai criminal court cleared actress Savika "Pinky" Chaiyadej along with her mother and brother on Thursday in one of the country's largest investment fraud prosecutions, while convicting five co-defendants in the notorious Forex-3D scheme. The verdicts bring partial closure to a complex case spanning multiple trial tracks that has ensnared over two dozen individuals accused of defrauding nearly 10,000 investors of more than 2.48 billion baht through fraudulent forex trading promises.
The court imposed aggregate nominal sentences totalling 49,110 years on the five convicted defendants, though Thailand's statutory cap on prison terms means the actual sentences will be substantially lower. Authorities also ordered financial restitution of 4.911 billion baht. The nominal figure—a mathematical sum of penalties across thousands of individual counts—reflects the prosecution's approach to quantifying systematic fraud across multiple victim complaints and supposed trading activities. In a comparable earlier judgment in December 2024, three defendants received nominal sentences of 49,125 years that were reduced to the statutory maximum of 20 years each under Section 91 of the Criminal Code.
Pinky's acquittal represents a significant development in a case that has gripped Thai public attention given her celebrity status and the family's involvement in the scheme's marketing networks. Her defence successfully argued that she remained merely an investor without recruiting responsibilities or compensation arrangements tied to bringing new participants into the operation. Throughout the extended proceedings, she maintained that her participation was limited to personal capital deployment in the scheme, denying active involvement in its promotion or expansion mechanisms. The court's acceptance of this distinction underscores the prosecution's burden in establishing specific culpability rather than association alone.
Her mother, Sarinya Chaiyadej, and brother Kittichet (formerly known as Sarayut Chaiyadej) were similarly acquitted after being transported from Bangkok Remand Prison to hear the judgement read. The three had been consolidated into a trial alongside Apiruk Kothi and numerous other defendants after their indictment in August 2022 joined an earlier prosecution track initiated against the scheme's core operators. This consolidation expanded the joint trial to encompass 24 defendants across multiple procedural histories, creating a sprawling legal proceeding that tested the Thai courts' capacity to manage complex multi-defendant fraud cases.
Forex-3D operated between November 2015 and September 2020 as an elaborate investment scheme marketed through its website and Facebook pages, promising returns to ordinary Thais with minimal financial literacy or trading experience. The operation enticed participants by guaranteeing 100 percent preservation of principal investment while offering substantial monthly and annual returns supposedly generated through professional forex trading on their behalf. Entry barriers were deliberately kept low, beginning at US$500 (approximately 15,000 baht) before being raised to US$2,000 (around 50,000 baht), making participation accessible to middle-income Thais seeking investment alternatives to traditional banking products.
Investors were stratified into tiered classes based on deposit size, ranging from the minimum US$2,000 entry level to US$40,000 for premium participants, with promised profit distributions varying across tiers from 60 to 80 percent. The scheme's sustainability relied on constant participant acquisition rather than legitimate trading activities—a classic pyramid structure masked by forex trading terminology that many victims found credible given the technical complexity surrounding currency markets. The recruitment incentive structure encouraged existing investors to solicit friends and family, creating exponential growth dynamics that eventually proved unsustainable as the operator's capital requirements exceeded inflows.
Prosecutors established that 9,842 individuals invested aggregately more than 2.489 billion baht in the operation, yet the defendants never deployed these funds into actual forex trading as advertised. The Department of Special Investigation accepted the case as special file No. 153/2562 in 2019 following complaints from thousands of defrauded participants, ultimately identifying Apiruk Kothi as the scheme's principal operator. When arrested at a Bangkok condominium in Thonglor on January 15, 2021, officers recovered a Lamborghini, extensive bank records, mobile devices and luxury watches—material evidence of funds diverted from investor capital into personal enrichment. The Bank of Thailand subsequently confirmed that Forex-3D had never received finance ministry licensing to conduct foreign-exchange operations, confirming its status as entirely unlawful from inception.
The investigation's complexity multiplied as authorities identified secondary networks of recruiters, celebrity promoters and affiliate marketers who facilitated scheme expansion in exchange for incentive payments. This distributed operational structure created multiple prosecution tracks, with some defendants—including singer Suteewan "Baitoey" Kunchorn and her ex-husband Pattanapon "DJ Man" Minthakhin—acquitted in December 2024 alongside others despite the same factual foundation. Such divergent outcomes across similar fact patterns illustrate judicial discretion in assessing individual culpability within organized fraud schemes, where courts must distinguish between knowing operators, knowing promoters, passive investors and manipulated participants.
Pinky's case specifically benefited from her legal team's argument that she was herself victimized by scheme operators, having invested personal capital based on false representations identical to those made to thousands of ordinary participants. Her initial detention at the Central Women's Correctional Institution and subsequent conditional release in November 2022 following a 5-million-baht security deposit underscored the prosecution's initial confidence in establishing her complicity. However, the court ultimately found insufficient evidence of her involvement in the recruitment mechanisms, marketing activities or financial administration that constituted the prosecution's legal foundation.
These verdicts carry significance for Southeast Asian investors and regulatory frameworks governing unlicensed financial services. The Forex-3D operation exposed critical weaknesses in Thai consumer protection mechanisms and the ease with which fraudsters exploited retail investors' limited financial literacy and appetite for outsized returns. Malaysian readers should note that similar unlicensed forex schemes periodically emerge across the region, often targeting participants through social media platforms and leveraging celebrity endorsements to establish false credibility. The Thai case demonstrates both the substantial losses possible when such operations operate unimpeded and the complexity authorities face in prosecuting distributed fraud networks involving hundreds of alleged participants across multiple culpability levels.
The case's resolution through multiple separate judgments with divergent outcomes reflects the practical reality that massive fraud prosecutions rarely produce uniform convictions across all accused, with some defendants successfully arguing limited knowledge or involvement. The nominal sentence figures, while striking in their arithmetic magnitude, mask the statutory reality that actual incarceration terms will be substantially reduced, potentially disappointing fraud victims awaiting substantial prison accountability. Authorities have prioritized financial restitution orders, though recovery mechanics in Thai law often prove inadequate to fully compensate victims whose losses frequently represent lifetime savings or retirement capital.
