Crime

Under the Ropes: US Woman Chases Pro-Muay Thai dream

Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu holding her own, with 34 wins, 16 losses, 3 draws and 24 KOs.

CHIANG MAI – When Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu gave up her life in New York to move to Chiang Mai in early 2012 she had one goal – to become a professional Muay Thai fighter. Twenty months and 53 professional fights later, that goal has changed – next stop, 100 fights.

“I started out wanting 50 fights but I’ve altered that to 100 because I’ve gone past the 50 fight mark already,” she says. “I think that if I get 100 fights or even close to that I will be one of the very few Western females, if not the only Western female, to accomplish that many fights in Thailand.”

Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu. Pic: Piyarat Jeasukon.

For the most part Sylvie fights at small venues in central Chiang Mai. She’s also a regular at local festival events in the outlying towns of the northern Thailand province, and occasionally travels down country for big events. So far, she’s holding her own, with 34 wins, 16 losses, 3 draws and 24 KOs.

At 5 feet 2 inches (1.52m) and 47 kilos, Sylvie doesn’t cut an imposing figure, but the results of a gruelling training regime and a steely determination are plain to see. The battle wounds are also there, front and centre. Her nose, broken three times in the last 18 months, angles slightly to the right and her right eye is still swollen from a fight four days earlier.

“Yeah, that’s from an elbow,” she says. “She was a southpaw and I kind of walked in with my arm to come around her and she popped me right on the top here. The swelling was the size of my hand.”

Muay Thai, then, is not a sport for the faint of heart. The training regime alone would strike fear into most. A 6.30am start is followed by a 7-14km run and three hours in the gym, then it’s all repeated in the afternoon – six days a week. And one thing can be certain, the Colorado-born fighter doesn’t do this for the money.

“I make about 3,000 baht ($95) per fight and about 1,000 baht of that goes to the gym. If I’m on a really big card that’s on TV I can make up to 20,000 baht before the gym takes its share. I think my total winnings would be somewhere around 165,000 baht ($5,180) since I started,” she says.

Although the funds are welcome, this is a journey based on a deep passion for the sport, a love affair that began while she was living in New York about five years ago.

“I discovered Muay Thai through watching the movie ‘Ong Bak’. I’d never seen Muay Thai before but when I saw Tony Jaa doing those movements I just completely fell in love with it. I fell in love with it in a way a person might fall in love with ballet or something, I didn’t think of it as fighting, I just wanted to do those things, they looked so beautiful.”

Sylvie in training at Lanna Muay Thai. Pic: Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu.

Regular Muay Thai training in the US only fuelled Sylvie’s love of the ‘sport of eight limbs’ and after a stint training in Chiang Mai in 2010 she and her husband Kevin decided to return in 2012 so she could pursue her dream of fighting professionally.

With 50-plus fights under her belt, Sylvie has earned respect in Chiang Mai Muay Thai circles, and is now even recognized by passers-by on the street. In the beginning, though, things weren’t so easy and this respect has been hard won. Proving herself at her gym – Lanna Muay Thai – was the first step.

“I contacted Den [her coach] before I came here and let him know how serious I was and that I wanted to fight a lot,” she says. “He kinda said, ‘okay, okay, we’ll see what we can do when you get here’. When I did get here I was very serious, I wanted to fight right away and they really weren’t certain about it. I think for the first six or seven months they weren’t sure I would keep with it, but now they’re completely on board.”

The fight board is up at Lanna Muay Thai gym. Pic: Fergal Barry-Murphy.

Today, Sylvie fights more than any fighter at the gym and has even become a role model of sorts, her record often used to encourage the male boxers to take on more fights. Even so, Muay Thai remains a male-dominated sport, something that is unlikely to change anytime soon and brings its own set of challenges.

“Being a woman in this sport is always going to be difficult, you’re always going to come up against obstacles that are not moving. At least they’re not moving in my lifetime, they might for the next generation,” says Sylvie, who turned 30 earlier this month.

“A lot of the sexism you come across is the same sexism you find everywhere, it’s not particular to Thailand, but there are elements that are very particular to Thailand and very engrained,” she adds. “For example in my gym we have two rings, one is only for men.”

There are also all kinds of social and cultural taboos relating to how women can interact with males at the gym, as well as some age-old superstitions.

“Men enter the ring over the top rope, women go in under the bottom rope… The ring is protected through amulets and magic and things like this… Women’s heads cannot go over the amulets or it negates them, so I have to crawl under that bottom rope so not as to affect the magic of the ring. It’s the same reason why I’m not allowed in the men’s ring in training.”

Despite the challenges female Muay Thai fighters face, the women’s sport is gaining popularity. Twenty years ago women were not allowed fight in the ring. Today, there are more women fighting than ever, with live televised events on the increase. The rules for women are the same as for men, the only difference is that each round is two minutes instead of three. Gambling on women’s events is particularly popular, a sure sign of their growing stature.

Sylvie’s training schedule doesn’t leave room for many other hobbies, though she does have one other passion – blogging. Her website documents her journey in impressive detail through words, images and video, while she has built a faithful following on social media networks.

“We started out with my YouTube channel which began when I first started Muay Thai. If you look at the channel it’s almost the exact length of how long I’ve been doing Muay Thai. I started it when I was training with Master K, my original trainer in the US…. It got huge and now it has over a million views. From there it spread to Facebook… and when we decided to come to Thailand the idea was to make a website that brings all of the different kinds of social media together,” she explains.

“For the most part though, because this is such an unusual experience, I wish that more women who are here would document what they are doing too, so it would encourage others to do the same.”

With 43 fights to go to the next milestone, Sylvie’s Muay Thai quest is far from over. In many ways, though, the dream has been already realized, the rest is about enjoying the journey. – By Saksith Saiyasombut & Siam Voices

You can keep track of Sylvie’s progress on her blog, Facebook and YouTube

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.