Crime

Australian Jack Hansen-Bartel’s Brutal Attack- “A Nightmare in Koh Samui”

Cowards’ punches: Melbourne’s Jack Hansen-Bartel says his life has been turned on its head by an attack in a Thai nightclub. Photo: Supplied

KOH SAMUI – Australian Jack Hansen-Bartel didn’t see the punches coming when he suffered horrific injuries to his face, ending his work as a part-time model and plans to enter a Melbourne university.

“I had no ability to defend myself as I was hit with cowards’ punches,” he says.

How 20-year-old Hansen-Bartel’s life turned into a nightmare from that night on Koh Samui in the Gulf of Thailand in June reveals a dark underbelly in southern Thai resorts that are promoted as paradises and attract tens of thousands of Australian tourists each month.

Bashed: Jack Hansen-Bartel in the aftermath of the attack. Photo: Supplied

The case has sent alarm bells through Thailand’s expatriate community amid a spike in the number of murders, rapes and assaults on islands such as Samui and Phuket, including the gruesome hacking to death of British tourists Hannah Witheridge, 23 and David Miller, 24, on Koh Tao on September 15.

No staff of Samui’s famous Green Mango club came to assist Hansen-Bartel, who was on the island celebrating his graduation from one of Bangkok’s top international schools, as he lay semi-unconscious on the floor, three of his teeth missing, a flap jaggedly torn from his gum and swallowing his own blood, making it difficult to breathe, witnesses say.

As Hansen-Bartel’s 24-year-old brother Jesse and five friends dragged him outside he said he felt his world was closing in and thought he was dying as blood gushed from his eye and mouth.

Outside in a small street known as Soi Green Mango a Thai man, who claimed he “owned” the street, attacked the group with a Taser, saying he was sick of foreigners.

Hansen-Bartel collapsed outside a go-go bar called Dream Girls, which was closed.

A man who appeared to be British turned up brandishing a bottle, yelling he was “sick of people like you”.

As Hansen-Bartel, drifted in and out of consciousness, covered in blood and struggling to breathe, an ambulance arrived in the street but the medical staff inexplicably did nothing to help, witnesses said.

About 40 minutes after the attack Hansen-Bartel was lifted into a friend’s van.

The driver took off following the ambulance, thinking it would lead them to a hospital, but it instead drove around in circles, apparently to try to lose the van.

Eventually the van driver broke away and by chance came across a small hospital, which agreed to treat him after payment for his medical costs were guaranteed.

Jack Hansen-Bartel with a friend before the attack. Photo: Supplied

“That was just the start of the nightmare,” said Hansen-Bartel’s mother, Annie Hansen, a single mother working in Bangkok.

Her son faces 18 months of multiple facial surgeries costing tens of thousands of dollars: his medical insurance had expired nine days before the attack.

Initial plastic surgery done on Samui needs to be redone before other surgery can be restarted.

Hansen-Bartel has been told by doctors to expect only 80 per cent recovery.

Samui police quickly charged two graduating students from an international school in China over the incident.

But six weeks later the students created charges of their own against Hansen-Bartel, alleging they were protecting a female friend who they claim he was “molesting,” and that a fight ensued.

Hansen-Bartel strenuously denies the claim although he said had met the female on the beach earlier in the day and at a bar in Soi Green Mango.

Closed circuit television from the Green Mango appears to show Hansen-Bartel walking into the club with the woman before being stopped by the students.

“One said to me, ‘she is with my friend…don’t mess with her,'” Hansen-Bartel told Fairfax Media. “I said, ‘Sorry, I didn’t know.'”

Hansen-Bartel said he then asked the woman if she knew the men and she said she did and would stay at the club with them.

Hansen-Bartel was injured later in the night.

Annie Hansen said in the weeks following the laying of the complaint against her son the family received harassing phone calls and threats from Samui.

“We were terrified….we were trying to find a safe house to take Jack,” Ms Hansen said.

“It’s unbelievable. We feel like we are fighting a mafia and money while Jack did nothing wrong,” she said.

Attempts Ms Hansen has made to have the case transferred from Samui to a Bangkok court have been rejected.

“We fear we will not be able to get justice on the island,” she said.

Ms Hansen said the case has been upsetting for her family members as they struggle to deal with Thai government departments and police agencies.

She and Jack went to Thailand’s Government House to press their concerns over the handling of the case on the day military rulers were sworn into office after staging a coup in May.

“They must have thought I was a crazy farang [foreigner],” she said, adding that military officers have since taken an interest, sending officers to monitor the questioning of her son by a Samui policeman.

Thailand’s military government is concerned about violence in tourist areas in the county where tourism accounts for almost 10 per cent of GDP.

Tourists arriving in Thailand fell 11.9 percent in August from a year earlier after a 10.0 percent drop in July.

Authorities have limited party hours on some of Thailand’s islands and are considering imposing restrictions on where they can be held.

Thailand’s tourism minister, Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul, suggested that hotels hand out wristbands to help identify tourists who get lost or into trouble but military leader Prayuth Chan-ocha later dismissed the idea, after an outcry from tourist organisations.

In the past few days Thai police have been investigating the rapes of two young tourists in the Thai resort city of Pattaya and the apparent murders of two bodies washed ashore on Samet island in the Gulf of Thailand and Phuket in the Andaman Sea, where police have launched a crackdown on criminal gangs and tourist scams and cleared beaches of illegal structures.

After three weeks of false leads and bungled investigations a Myanmar man has allegedly confessed to the murders on Koh Tao, a popular destination for divers.

Hansen-Bartel says his life has changed forever following his trip to Samui. Before he went he told his mother it would be the best time of his life.

He suffers agoraphobia, severe depression and cannot sleep at night because of the pain of his injuries.

“I was to continue to work as a model in order to save to help pay for university and to have this sideline as my main source of income,” he says.

“This will no longer happen and I have no source of income.”

A judge is scheduled to hear evidence in the case in January.

By Lindsay Murdoch

Crime

Police Officer Being Ordained at Temple Arrested for Running Scam Call Center

Police in Northern Thailand have arrested a fellow officer as he was being ordained at a temple in Ngao district of neighbouring Lampang province.

Pol Lt Col Bandit Khonkan chief inspector from the Hang Dong police station was disrobed and taken to the Chang Puak station in Chiang Mai. He was arrested on charges of running a call centre scam gang in Chiang Mai Province.

According to Thai Media Chiang Mai Provincial Police Region 5 obtained an arrest warrant for Pol Lt Col Bandit on Friday from the Chiang Mai Provincial Court for procuring illegal telecom equipment, setting up a station and using public airwaves to run a telecommunications business without permission.

Pol Lt Col Bandit reportedly told investigators that he was not the ringleader and was only a member of the gang with Chinese partners.

His arrest followed the apprehension of his 26-year-old daughter, Miss Wanuchapond, 26, and three others during raids at three housing projects in Chiang Mai on Friday, Pol Maj Gen Weerachon Boontawee, deputy chief of Provincial Police Region 5 told Thai media.

During the raids police police discovered around 12 GSM gateways, or SIM boxes, which are devices used for converting cellular networks into mobile phone numbers used domestically.

The chief inspectors daughter Miss Wanuchapond told the arresting officers that she was paid 8,000 baht a month at each of the three locations for renting thr rooms and monitoring devices.

She claimed she had no idea what the devices were and accepted the job because the pay was attractive.

Police investigators working with telecom regulators used a special tracking device to monitor the gang’s communications and learned that its base was in Myanmar opposite Mae Sai district of Chiang Rai.

The call center gang used the GSM gateways to make calls over the internet to scam people in Thailand out of million of baht.

The GSM gateways transmitting signals via SIM boxes to convert them into domestic phone numbers, duping victims into thinking they were being called from Thai government agencies.

Pol Maj Gen Weerachon said that each SIM box held 32 SIM cards, with a capacity of up to 300,000 calls a month. The seized devices had made fraudulent calls over 3.6 million times.

He said the their investigation is ongoing and they are working to track down the remaining conspirators, including Chinese and other Thai suspects.

Authorities are still deciding whether Pol Lt Col Bandit will be dismissed from the force, he said, adding that so far, no other officers are known to have been involved.

Police in Chiang Rai Launch Crackdown on Cyber Criminals in Golden Triangle

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Settha Thavisin has authorized the establishment of an emergency cyber center operated by the Royal Thai Police to combat transnational crimes committed by call center gangs along the Thai border in Chiang Rai province.

On July 19, Prime Minister Settha Thavisin directed the Center to combat information technology crimes. The Royal Thai Police (Royal Thai Police) will crack down on call center gangs in Myanmar, Laos, and along the border.

His directive comes as call center gangs ratchet up their scams to defraud people of their money, causing concern among Thais and jeopardizing the country’s economic and social stability.

Related Police News:

Machete Wielding Man Shot an Killed by Police in Chiang Rai

https://www.chiangraitimes.com/chiangrai-news/machete-wielding-man-shot-an-killed-by-police-in-chiang-rai/

Crime

Thai Immigration Police Arrest Colombian Tourists Over Home Invasions

Immigration police officers have arrested four Colombian nationals in connection with a series of home burglaries at luxury housing complexes in the Bangkok metropolitan area and Chiang Buri Province.

Pol Maj Gen Panthana Nuchanart, deputy commissioner of the Immigration Bureau, told a press briefing that three of the suspects were apprehended in Nonthaburi Province and the fourth in South Pattaya, Chon Buri Province.

According to the Bangkok Post, the Colombians were charged with stealing conspiracy and seized around 3 million baht (US$82,500.00).

According to Pol Maj Gen Panthana, the criminals rode motorcycles through housing estates, scoping out the properties and waiting for the owners to depart before committing their crimes.

He stated that all four of the accused denied any involvement in the home break-ins, but the arresting squad discovered evidence that implicated them.

Police called to home invasion

Meanwhile, police were dispatched to a luxury housing development in Tambon Nong Prue, Chonburi Province, after a Chinese man was attacked during a house invasion.

When they arrived, they discovered the house owner, Mr. Qian Peng Yi, visibly scared and with marks from being tied up with a cable. He informed police that three Chinese males broke into his home at 9 p.m., one of whom brandished a gun at him and directed him to his bedroom.

They bound his hands and feet, gagged him with fabric, taped his head, and forced him into the bed. The intruders then attempted to compel him into transferring 10 million baht in cryptocurrencies to them, endangering the life of his 33-year-old cousin who was in a second-floor bedroom.

While they scoured the house in search of riches, Mr. Peng Yi managed to flee and hide; he subsequently observed them leave with his cousin. Officials investigated the property and analyzed security camera footage from the incident and surrounding areas.

Around 9 p.m., a 30-year-old van driver came at the Bang Lamung police station after being contacted by an agency to carry Chinese customers from Pattaya to Suvarnabhumi Airport.

The driver informed authorities that he was supposed to pick them up at a motel about a kilometer from the Chinese businessman’s home. He then drove them to Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport, arriving at 1 a.m. and receiving 1,800 baht.

The driver took a snapshot of the group smoking at the airport gate and identified one of them as the victim’s cousin. Police suspected coordination between her and the three suspects in her cousin’s heist, who all departed Thailand on the same aircraft.

Other Bangkok News:

Police in Bangkok Discover Six Vietnamese Tourists Dead in 5 Star Hotel

Police in Bangkok Discover Six Vietnamese Tourists Dead in 5 Star Hotel

Crime

Son of Thailand’s Leading Legal Scholar on Corruption Arrested for Running Online Gambling Network

The son of a former senator and leading economist and expert on corruption and gambling in Thailand has been arrested for on charges of running an online gambling network and its payment system.

Police from Thailand’s Technology Crime Suppression Division (TCSD) have confiscated assets worth more than (US$ 11.1 million) 400 million baht.

Narote Piriyarangsan, 33, was arrested following crackdowns in three sites around the city, according to Pol Maj Gen Athip Pongsiwapai, commander of the police Technology Crime Suppression Division (TCSD).

Mr Narote’s father, Sangsit Piriyarangsan, is an economist who has written articles and books about corruption and gambling. He was one of the appointed senators that were investigating the government’s intention to legalize casino gaming before their terms expired.

Police also detained 39-year-old Narayut Narakaew, the owner of the gambling website 69pgslot.com. The Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the couple for operating an internet gambling service and money laundering.

According to the Bangkok Post, police seized two desktop computers, one laptop computer, 14 mobile phones, 21 bank passbooks, 53 ATM cards, and four high-end cars — a Ferrari 926 GTS, an Aston Martin, a Lexus, and a Subaru — totaling more than 400 million baht.

Police launched the inquiry after discovering the online gambling site, which accepted funds via an automatic deposit-withdrawal system through bank accounts and deposits in the AskMePay system. Players scanned the VPay QR code as well as the QR codes for Heng Online 888 or Heng Pay Company.

Police also discovered that payments received via QR code scans were transferred to the account of Heng Pay Co and then to the gambling website’s mule accounts using AskMePay, which did not use banks’ face recognition scanning. An inquiry indicated a monthly turnover of approximately 5 billion baht.

According to investigators, the website has been up and running for around four years, with the payment mechanism in use for roughly eight months.

According to Pol Maj Gen Athip, Mr Narote owns the gaming website’s payment systems and is the director of Heng Pay Co. After gathering evidence, authorities requested arrest warrants for 14 people.

Thailand does not allow almost any kind of gaming. Even though the law doesn’t say anything specific about online gaming, it is still considered gambling. The country has pretty strict rules about gambling. Thai punters can bet on the national lottery and horse races, but they can’t bet on any other types of games.

But it’s not a secret that there is a huge illegal gaming business in Thailand, even though it’s illegal.

The illegal casinos, online betting shops, underground lotteries, and pop-up bookies that take bets on everything from cockfights to Muay Thai make a shadow economy that is worth billions of dollars every year.