Nearly four years ago the Thai cyber-crime unit raided my house in Pattaya. The head officer officer arrested me on charges of intellectual property theft. My website offering F1 merchandise had been #1 in the search engines over various multinational car corporations. I knew that ranking would cause me a problem one day and this was it.
The police transported me to Bangkok, where I was processed with politeness. The head officer whispered to me that he had interrogated my neighbors and they had reported that I was a good farang. Their comments saved me from a night in the monkey house. I wished that they had informed me about the investigation, but the Thais know best when to shut their mouths.
The colonel in charge of the operation set my bail at $1000. I paid it on the spot. The next morning I was back in Pattaya. It was obviously time to leave the Last Babylon.
My friends attempted to persuade me from leaving them. My work options were limited to teaching or managing a bar. The first paid 30,000 baht per month and the second required late hours and heavy drinking. I opted for a return to New York after my trial. My pregnant wife wasn't happy about my departure, but I told her that things would be okay. It took a long time for that promise to be true.
My website has been closed for a long time.
Yesterday I decided to see, if any mention of www.f1-shopping.net existed online.
I discovered that the site was up for sale and several urls lower was a testimonial from a satisfied buyer.
"I got a AMG jacket on-line at Formula one F1 Jackets Formula 1 Shirts and caps F1 Merchandise
It was $79 bucks and took about 10 days to get........I am pretty sure it"s not orginal "AMG"..........
Good Luck."
We all need a little of that these days.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
No Better Than Yesterday
Nearly four years ago the Thai cyber-crime unit raided my house in Pattaya. The head officer officer arrested me on charges of intellectual property theft. My website offering F1 merchandise had been #1 in the search engines over various multinational car corporations. I knew that ranking would cause me a problem one day and this was it.
The police transported me to Bangkok, where I was processed with politeness. The head officer whispered to me that he had interrogated my neighbors and they had reported that I was a good farang. Their comments saved me from a night in the monkey house. I wished that they had informed me about the investigation, but the Thais know best when to shut their mouths.
The colonel in charge of the operation set my bail at $1000. I paid it on the spot. The next morning I was back in Pattaya. It was obviously time to leave the Last Babylon.
My friends attempted to persuade me from leaving them. My work options were limited to teaching or managing a bar. The first paid 30,000 baht per month and the second required late hours and heavy drinking. I opted for a return to New York after my trial. My pregnant wife wasn't happy about my departure, but I told her that things would be okay. It took a long time for that promise to be true.
My website has been closed for a long time.
Yesterday I decided to see, if any mention of www.f1-shopping.net existed online.
I discovered that the site was up for sale and several urls lower was a testimonial from a satisfied buyer.
"I got a AMG jacket on-line at Formula one F1 Jackets Formula 1 Shirts and caps F1 Merchandise
It was $79 bucks and took about 10 days to get........I am pretty sure it"s not orginal "AMG"..........
Good Luck."
We all need a little of that these days.
No comments:
Post a Comment