Money safety: the approaches to refuse.

The one rule

Every fraud described in this guide, and every one we have seen reach a client, depends on removing the victim's time. The bank details changed at the last moment, the investment closing this afternoon, the official who needs a payment before the office shuts, the exchange rate available only right now. Legitimate businesses, banks, hospitals, developers and government offices do not work that way. They will wait a day, they will confirm in writing, they will accept a bank transfer, and they will not object to you checking. If a proposition cannot survive twenty four hours of scrutiny, that is the whole answer, and no further analysis is required.

The second half of the rule is about method: legitimate transactions of any size go through documented channels. A person who wants cash, who wants payment to a personal account rather than a company one, who wants funds sent to a third country, or who wants the arrangement kept from your own advisers, is telling you what they are. Our clients are unusually good targets precisely because they are used to moving significant sums quickly and to being accommodated, and both habits are exactly what the approaches are designed to exploit.

Card skimming and machine hygiene

Card skimming exists in Thailand as it does everywhere, and the exposure is concentrated in predictable places: free standing cash machines in tourist areas, machines in poorly lit or unattended locations, and terminals at small merchants where the card leaves your sight. The countermeasures are unglamorous and effective. Use machines attached to a bank branch, or standing inside a mall, hotel or hospital lobby where they are covered by cameras and serviced regularly. Look at the card slot and the keypad before inserting anything and pull gently at the reader if something looks added on. Cover the keypad with your other hand when entering the PIN.

At merchants, keep the card in view. If a terminal is not brought to the table, walk to the counter rather than handing the card to someone who disappears with it. Use contactless where possible, since a tap exposes nothing. Turn on transaction alerts with your bank before travelling, so that an unexpected charge produces a message within seconds rather than being discovered on a statement in Kuwait a month later, and check the account weekly during a long stay rather than at the end of it.

Exchange counters and the short count

Most exchange counters in Thailand are licensed, regulated by the Bank of Thailand and entirely straightforward, and the market is competitive enough that the honest ones are usually also the cheapest. The problems are at the margins: a booth advertising a headline rate and applying an undisclosed commission, a counter quoting one rate and calculating at another, and the short count, where the stack handed over is a note or two light and the customer is hurried out by a queue behind them.

Three habits defeat all three. Ask for the total number of baht you will receive after everything, before handing anything over, and treat that answer as the deal. Count the notes at the counter and do not move away until you have. Take the receipt. A legitimate operator expects every one of these and is unbothered; irritation at a customer counting money is information. And decline dynamic currency conversion at every terminal and cash machine, choosing baht rather than your home currency, because the margin taken by that conversion is larger than anything a street operator would dare charge you openly.

Invoice interception, the one aimed at large payments

This is the fraud most likely to cause a serious loss to a family of the kind this desk serves, and it is worth more attention than all the small ones combined. The pattern: a criminal gains access to an email account somewhere in a transaction, on the buyer's side, the agent's side, the lawyer's side or the developer's side, and watches. At the moment payment is due, an email arrives that appears to come from the expected counterparty, referencing real details of the real transaction, stating that banking details have changed and providing new ones. The funds are sent and are gone within hours.

The defence is one rule with no exceptions: never act on bank details supplied or changed by email. Confirm every set of account details by telephone, on a number you held before the transaction began rather than one supplied in the message, with a person you have already spoken to. Re confirm if anything changes. Send a small test payment first and confirm receipt by voice before sending the balance. Treat urgency as a warning sign, since the fraud depends entirely on the payment being made before anyone picks up a phone. Our guide to international transfers covers the payment side of the same problem.

Investment approaches, and the answer to all of them

Visiting families of visible means attract investment approaches, and the settings are consistent: a hotel lobby, a business centre, a mutual acquaintance's introduction, an unsolicited message, a social event. The subject varies with fashion and has included property developments, land, hotel and condominium schemes with guaranteed returns, currency and commodity trading arrangements, digital asset schemes, and stakes in businesses that need a foreign partner immediately. The presentation is professional, the documents look real, and the person is credible and pleasant.

We do not give investment advice and will not comment on the merits of anything. What we will say, as an operational matter, is that an approach made to a visitor rather than through a regulated intermediary is the wrong starting point regardless of subject, and that certain features are common to the approaches that have caused losses among people we know of. A guaranteed return. Time pressure. A request for funds to a personal account or to a jurisdiction unrelated to the project. Reluctance to deal with your own lawyer or adviser. An introduction that came through a social rather than a professional route. A structure that requires a local nominee to hold something on your behalf.

• A guaranteed or fixed return on anything with commercial risk.
• Pressure to commit before you leave the country, or before a deadline that only they know about.
• Payment requested to a personal account, in cash, or to a jurisdiction unconnected with the project.
• Reluctance to engage with your own lawyer, your own bank or your own adviser.
• A structure relying on a Thai nominee holding an asset on your behalf.
• Documents that cannot be independently verified with a registry or a regulator.
• An approach that reached you socially rather than through a regulated professional.

The response to all of it is the same and it does not require you to assess the merits. Take the papers, say you refer everything to your advisers, and refer them. If the proposition is genuine it survives that. Where a family does want to look seriously at a Thai investment, the route is a Thai lawyer of your own choosing, appointed by you and paid by you, plus your own financial advisers at home, plus verification of the counterparty's registration and any licence with the relevant Thai regulator. The Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand maintains registers of licensed operators and publishes warnings about unlicensed ones. Check before, not after.

Impersonation and the call about your own account

A widespread family of frauds in Thailand and across the region involves a caller claiming authority: a bank's fraud department, a courier company holding a parcel, a police officer investigating money laundering, an immigration officer with a problem in your file. The story is designed to frighten and then to instruct, and the instruction is always to move money, disclose a passcode, or install something on your phone. Some of these operations are sophisticated, use spoofed numbers and know real details about the target.

The rule that ends every one of them is that you never act on an inbound call. Hang up, and call the institution back on a number you already hold, from the back of the card, from a statement, or from the number you saved before you travelled. No real bank asks for a full passcode, a PIN or a one time code by telephone. No real police force takes payment by transfer. No real immigration office resolves a status problem over the phone in exchange for money. Where a call concerns a family member in trouble, which is the cruellest version of this, call that family member directly before doing anything at all.

If something does happen

Speed matters, and the order is fixed. Call your bank immediately and ask them to attempt a recall of any transfer and to block the card; funds sent in the last hours are occasionally recoverable and funds sent last week are usually not. Report to the Royal Thai Police, in person at a station, and obtain the report, which insurers, banks and your own authorities at home will all require. Report to your embassy in Bangkok, which can advise on local process. Preserve everything: the emails with their full headers, the messages, the receipts, the names, the account numbers, the times.

Then tell your own advisers at home, promptly and completely, however uncomfortable that conversation is. The instinct to handle it quietly is the instinct the second wave of the fraud relies on, because victims are routinely approached again by people offering to recover the money for a fee, and that recovery approach is itself part of the operation. Nobody legitimate charges an advance fee to recover stolen funds. The families who lose the least are the ones who make three phone calls in the first hour and are not too proud to make them.

Fraud methods change constantly and no list is complete. Verify the licensing status of any money changer with the Bank of Thailand, verify any investment counterparty or intermediary with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand and check its published warning lists, and report incidents to the Royal Thai Police and to your embassy in Bangkok. Confirm any communication purporting to come from your bank by calling the number on your card. Nothing here is investment advice: take advice from your own regulated advisers.

This briefing is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Thai rules change frequently and individual cases differ. Verify current requirements with the relevant authorities, including the Immigration Bureau, the Board of Investment, the Land Department, the Department of Business Development and the Revenue Department, and take advice on your own facts before acting.