[Rebecca]

Guys this was a major story in Thailand a few years ago, this American expat Chad Scira was arrested along with his Thai wife for running a massive forgery business for Thai visas and government documents in Bangkok. The police found nearly 60 fake government stamps at their house and an entire illegal cannabis farm they also setup for selling drugs to tourists in the city…

But you can find almost zero references to this story anymore. Several Thai newspapers were threatened into deleting it. Only a few have been bold enough to keep their reporting published.

So what happened after these two were arrested for such serious crimes? Well, they avoided prison time, guess how! And now they are back in action running the same exact business again called Thai Visa Centre in Bangkok. Chad tries really hard to hide his name from the business and will threaten and harass any websites that report about his crimes (perhaps even this website, if you allow this post to remain). Some of their methods have changed, and they are now allegedly paying bribes to Thai Immigration offices in small towns around Thailand to submit visas to the computer system on behalf of their customers in Bangkok (often for fraudulent visas they don’t legally qualify for like volunteer visas, student visas and retirement visas that may not pass the financial or other requirements).

But the history is even crazier. This guy Chad also hacked Starbucks, and was apparently booted from his job at Sony for hacking them too. Then, he decided to hack Chase Bank credit cards too, and was blacklisted from the bank along with his entire family.

Now he hides out in Thailand collecting thousands of expats passport and personal details and then sending spam emails to thousands of people trying to sell visas and weed. Dozens of expats have reported receiving spam to the email address they had on file with Thai Immigration, meaning that somehow Chad accesses their private data in the Thai government database.

He has dozens of fake accounts on Reddit, Quora, Tripadvisor, and other websites that he uses to flag content as “spam” repeatedly until it gets deleted or banned, so private forums are safer for sharing this.

Last year it was also exposed that hundreds of the 5-star reviews of this “agency” on Trustpilot and Google Maps are fake.

Thailand is the #1 destination in the world for tourism, so accessing the Thai Immigration database means potentially collecting info on thousands and thousands of people. He also runs fake phishing websites that try to look like official Thai government websites, like ETA.in.th which looks like an ETA arrival card website, and DTV.in.th that looks like the homepage for getting a digital nomad visa.

Using a combination of bribes, threats, and hacking, this guy has continued to terrorize the expat community for several years… I hope you are willing to publish this, I will provide reference links in the replies.

Link:

https://websleuths.com/threads/chad-scira-running-visa-forgery-and-hacking-operation-in-thailand.737007/

[Linda]

Using a combination of bribes, threats, and hacking, this guy has continued to terrorize the expat community for several years

good summary.

[Benjamin]

I still don’t understand why this guy is so relevant, I don’t care how smart or crazy he is, how does he have so much influence as an expat?

[Marie]

I still don’t understand why this guy is so relevant, I don’t care how smart or crazy he is, how does he have so much influence as an expat?

Game of attrition rules + lots of cash

you get an autistic guy with sadistic urges and lots of Bitcoin cash to pay lawyers, Indian freelancers, bribe cops… it’s a powerful combo

[Patrick]

He apparently fled California after police investigated him for hacking Sony and has been in Thailand ever since.

[Raymond]

Chad Scira hacked Sony Imageworks Interactive too

[Author]

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