PUBLISHED : 15 Nov 2023 at 17:49
The Criminal Court on Wednesday released singer Baitoey on bail of 5 million baht and ordered she be fitted with an electronic tag, in the multi-billion-baht Forex-3D Ponzi case.
Suteewan “Baitoey” Thaweesin, 35, is also prohibited from leaving the country without the court’s prior permission.
She expressed her tearful gratitude to the court. It was the third time she had applied for release on bail. The request was filed on Oct 19. Previous requests were rejected because of the huge damages alleged in the case, the large number of victims and the risk of her fleeing the country.
Her family had handed in her passport and proposed the use of a monitoring device when offering an asset worth 5 million baht as a bond for her release.
In May, Ms Suteewan and her husband Pattanapon Minthakin, aka DJ Man, 40, were arraigned for alleged fraud in connection with the Forex-3D Ponzi case and denied bail.
She was remanded in custody to the Central Women’s Correctional Institution and her husband to Bangkok Remand Prison.
They were among 16 suspects in the Forex-3D scam.
They earlier said they had never enticed anyone to invest in Forex-3D, and were not listed as business partners in Forex 3D Co.
Forex-3D claimed to be an online dealer in foreign exchange. It was unlicensed but had a flashy website. Celebrities were paid to promote it. Forex-3D allegedly cheated thousands of people out of about 2 billion baht in total.
Popular actress Sawika “Pinky” Chaidet was also arraigned on charges of operating the forex Ponzi scheme. She was released on bail in November last year and allowed to remove her monitoring device in January.
The alleged Ponzi was run by Apiruk Kothi, who lured thousands of victims into investing in foreign currencies with the promise of high returns. Instead, they lost billions. He was arrested in 2021.