Mr Apichat Bancharak, co-owner of Laemgate Seafood Restaurant
Owners of Laemgate Seafood Restaurant were sentenced in court yesterday to nearly a millennium and a half behind bars for defrauding its customers.
Last year, the seafood restaurant launched a pay-in-advance food promotion online, offering customers vouchers for (unusually) cheap seafood buffets – a ten-seat buffet set for 880 baht (S$40); a 20-seat seafood buffet set for 2,020 baht (S$90); and 3,000 baht (S$130) for a 30-seat buffet set.
As many as 20,000 customers bought 50 million baht (S$2.2 million) worth of seafood vouchers from the establishment.
According to Thai PBS, customers were initially satisfied with the services. But because of the long waiting list, it took several months of advance bookings before customers could actually eat there.
Then in March 2019, the restaurant announced its closure via social media, saying that they were unable to get hold of enough fresh seafood to meet the overwhelming demand. Customers who purchased the vouchers were offered a refund, but out of 818 customers who complained, only 375 got their money back.
Hundreds then lodged complaints with the Consumer Protection Police Division.
Yesterday the Criminal Court found executives Apichat Bancharak and Prapassorn Bawornbancha of Laemgate Infinite guilty of false advertising, fraud and computer crimes for scamming customers. They were handed a whopping 1,446 years in prison each.
But because of their admission of guilt, Mr Apichat and Ms Prapassorn's jail terms were reduced by half to 723 years. They will in fact only be serving a maximum of 20 years each, as Section 91 (2) of the Criminal Code limits the actual jail term to 20 years.
In addition to the epic sentence, their company Laemgate Infinite was fined 1.8m baht, and both parties were ordered to refund 2.5m baht in damages to the victims.