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Thailand Gets Tough on Scammers Seizing US$28.5 Million in Assets

Thailand Gets Tough on Scammers Seizing Billions in Assets

On Wednesday morning, police in Thailand raided the homes and businesses of people they thought were Thai and foreign scammers. They seized assets worth 1 billion baht (US$28.5 million), such as expensive homes and cars, in Bangkok and other provinces.

Around 6 a.m., about 200 officers from the Central Investigation Bureau, the Anti-Money Laundering Office, and public prosecutors went into 30 places in Bangkok, Samut Prakan, and Udon Thani provinces and checked them.

The head of the Technology Crime Suppression Division, Pol Maj Gen Athip Pongsiwapai, said that the targets were likely Thai and foreign suspects in romance scams, business scams, and money laundering.

There were 16 high-end homes on Krungthep Kreetha Road, and most of them cost about 50 million baht.

Officials also raided a law company that a Chinese suspect owned through a Thai proxy. People think that the company is helping illegal businesses hide their money.

Officials had arrest warrants for 14 suspects, including a Thai model who was among the nine people taken into custody on Wednesday. Some of the people who were taken were Chinese and some were from Myanmar.

Pol Maj Gen Athip said the raids happened because a Thai woman complained that a romance scam gang had tricked her into investing in a fake cryptocurrency. She went to the Sam Rong Nuea police station in Samut Prakan province to make a report.

Later, detectives found out that the scammers made a lot of deals where they changed digital cash into baht. The money was used to buy high-end homes and cars in Bangkok and the areas near it.

Pol Maj Gen Athip said that about one billion baht worth of cash and digital assets had moved through their accounts.

According to the Immigration Bureau, a Chinese couple has been arrested for having fake investment schemes in China that caused more than 1.5 billion baht in damage.

Crackdown on foreign criminals in Thailand

The Bureau commissioner, Pol Lt Gen Pakphumpipat Sajjapan, gave a meeting on Tuesday about a crackdown on foreign criminals who have fled to Thailand. The arrest was one of the things he talked about.

He said that the arrest was made at the request of Chinese officials, who thought that the two had gone to Thailand after scamming people out of 1.5 billion baht.

Lt. Gen. Pakphumpipat said that the cops found them at a hotel in Pattaya, took away their visas, and turned them over for more action.

He said that another Chinese person was nabbed for hiding assets worth 600 million baht that her husband got from running an illegal gambling site. The 29-year-old woman ran away to Thailand, while her husband may have gone to Singapore.

A 37-year-old South Korean man who was wanted in his home country for smuggling methamphetamine was also arrested, the commissioner said. The man had overstayed his visa, which had ended in September of last year.

Deputy National Police Chief Pol Gen Surachate Hakparn will go to Cambodia on Thursday to help Cambodian police find a Chinese-led scam gang in Poipet that is linked to a family tragedy in Samut Prakan.

Suicide Murder Over Scam

Wednesday, Pol Gen Surachate called a meeting with police officers at the Muang police station in Samut Prakan to check on how the family deaths case was going.

The deputy national police chief said that a warrant to arrest Sanit Dokmai, 41, who is accused of killing his wife, Wipaporn Racha, 44, and their two kids, ages 9 and 13, has already been approved.

Mr. Sanit tried to kill himself by cutting his throat and wrist, but he didn’t succeed. He is now getting care in a hospital.

After a long investigation, the police were able to get arrest warrants for phone scammers who were linked to the online fraud and big debt that seemed to have made the man do what he did.

The wife was trying to help her husband pay off a debt, but she fell for a scam and lost 1.7 million baht. This made the husband so upset that he killed his wife and their children and then tried to kill himself.

Pol Gen Surachate said that the court has given police permission to arrest 11 people who owned mule bank accounts linked to the scam gang. Two of the suspects were already in custody.

The deputy national police chief said that the two suspects lived in Sa Kaeo. They had to take money out of their bank accounts and cross the border to give it to the leader of the Chinese gang in Poipet.

Suchada Chabutsri, 19, who started a bank account for the scam gang, was caught Tuesday night when she came back from Poipet across the border. The head of the Sa Kaeo border police, Pol Col Rung Thongmon, said on Wednesday.

The Samut Prakan Provincial Court issued an arrest warrant for Ms. Suchada on August 28 for working with others to commit fraud, putting false information into a computer system that hurt people, starting a bank account and letting others use it or an electronic card for fraudulent purposes.

Pol Gen Surachate said that the police had taken the people involved’s bank accounts, cash, and ATM cards. On Thursday, he would go to Cambodia to work with the Cambodian cops to find the scammers.

“The murder case traumatised people and got a lot of attention from the media, especially because scammers are to blame for the debts that led to the tragedy,” the deputy national police chief said.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

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Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

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Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

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Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

trump

Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Could Last-Minute Surprises Derail Kamala Harris’ Campaign? “Nostradamus” Explains the US Poll.

Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

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