video Man arrested after stealing money from well known visa agency in Bangkok

[Jonathan Fairfield]

 

Asim Muhammad Mehran in custody in Hat Yai

A man has been arrested after stealing a substantial amount of money from a visa agency in Bangkok.

Asim Muhammad Mehran was arrested late on Friday evening in Hat Yai trying to leave Thailand. 

Mehran had been employed by the Thai Visa Centre in Bangkok since July 2020 after  being recommended by a former employee. 

Mehran is understood to have stolen money in the region of 300,000 baht and it has also been discovered that he began stealing money from his employer just 5 days into his new job.

On that occasion, he told a client that he had charged them incorrectly and that they needed to pay an additional amount of money. He made the client scan a QR code which meant the additional money was transferred to Mehran’s personal bank account. 

After being contacted by a client, Grace, Thai Visa Centre manager was able to use the office CCTV to catch Mehran stealing money that the client had used to pay for a visa.

 

On Grace's birthday he bought her a cake which said "I wish you a happy birthday from my heart".

Mehran also went on to steal 100,000 THB from Grace directly and 200,000 THB from a family of 5 trying to travel back to Thailand, where he again arranged money to be transferred into his personal bank account. 

Grace said she personally covered the fees for the family trying to get back into Thailand.

In a post on Facebook, Thai Visa Centre said: “Our team is very happy that we were able to successfully prevent the criminal from causing any further damage to our clients.

“Without this joint effort it would not have been possible.

“If anyone has given cash, or made any online transfers to ASIM MUHAMMAD MEHRAN for our services please message us. We can verify it, and we will cover all fees.

“We will continue to offer the highest level of service, and have already made many changes to our process, and office security to ensure nothing like this can ever happen again.

“Grace personally thanks you for all officers fast support, and cooperation, they closed this case in less than 3 days!

“She also thanks all clients for the kind messages of support”.

Thai Visa Centre have said they will cover any customer’s money that was stolen by Mehran. 

They also want to inform their clients that all their information is safe and their visas are fine.

However, any clients who are concerned about the status of their visa or who think they may have been a victim of Mehran are urged to contact Thai Visa Centre directly.

Thai Visa Centre have also confirmed that new processes have been implemented and security increased in their offices to prevent similar incidents happening in the future. 

*Thaivisa.com and Thai Visa Centre are two separate organisations. However, Thai Visa Centre are one of our advertisers.

 

-- © Copyright Thai Visa News 2021-03-15

 

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[ThailandRyan]

Well now the e-mail they sent me makes sense.  However, I have never used their services or requested information from them, so the bigger question is how they received my e-mail address.  Could the TV site have given it to them since they are an advertiser or do they have a mining program embedded on TV to funnel our personal information to them?

[ThaiVisaCentre]

9 minutes ago, ThailandRyan said:

Well now the e-mail they sent me makes sense.  However, I have never used their services or requested information from them, so the bigger question is how they received my e-mail address.  Could the TV site have given it to them since they are an advertiser or do they have a mining program embedded on TV to funnel our personal information to them?

Please send us an email, and we will try to figure out origin.

We have heavily advertised over the many years, and offer referral programs.

Subject: "Email Trace".

Also we emailed everyone in our contact list I think on March 10th to notify everyone so we could determine exactly what he was doing. So if you had any prior communication with us you would have received this email.

[edwardandtubs]

It doesn't fill me with confidence that this agency ended up employing a person like this in the first place.

[Skallywag]

I always pay for my Visa at the Thai Immigration Office and it is only 1,900 Baht a year. ????

[RichardColeman]

44,000 baht for a one year visa  ? Seems slightly expensive to me !!

 

I vote the rat bag thief work as a Myanmar worker on 300 baht a day until he pays it all off

[richsilver]

Why did they blur his face, then go on to show a complete video of him?

[Scouse123]

1 hour ago, richsilver said:

Why did they blur his face, then go on to show a complete video of him?

 

I agree your view point but I think the guy under arrest in the blurred photo is in custody, and from a government decree a while back now to protect the innocent and not presume guilt before trial, his face must be obscured.

I think the video will have been uploaded from by the actual company itself, and they are not governed by the regulation.

Beware of Asians bearing birthday cakes!

 

 

 

[ThaiFelix]

Sounds more like an advert to me.

[Neeranam]

 

Why don't they mention the nationity if the thief?

 

 

[Neeranam]

5 hours ago, RichardColeman said:

44,000 baht for a one year visa  ? Seems slightly expensive to me !!

 

I vote the rat bag thief work as a Myanmar worker on 300 baht a day until he pays it all off

Obviously the client doesn't qualify for the given visa or they would go to immigration. 

I'm amazed they get away with it! 

[mikeymike100]

10 minutes ago, Neeranam said:

 

Why don't they mention the nationity if the thief?

 

 

Yes normally its the first thing mentioned. I hope Thai Visa isn't going woke !!

[Neeranam]

1 minute ago, mikeymike100 said:

Yes normally its the first thing mentioned. I hope Thai Visa isn't going woke !!

I expect he didn't have a work permit. 

[Misterwhisper]

Looking at the fancy figures this "visa centre" is charging for their services, and knowing that the official fee for a non-immigrant visa extension is 1,900 baht (single entry), or 5,000 baht for multiple entry, I cannot help but thinking that there has been money-skimming going on all along.

Oh, and I loathe those "agents" clogging up immigration bureau lines across the country. When you've got one or two in front of you and observe how they each slam a bundle of 20 or 30 passports with accompanying paperwork on the desk, you just know that you're going to waste the entire day. There really should be counters exclusively for agents. THEY get paid for sitting around. I don't. 

[Neeranam]

17 hours ago, ThailandRyan said:

Well now the e-mail they sent me makes sense. 

I get email and I'm a Thai citizen, very annoying. 

 

[JeffersLos]

41 minutes ago, Neeranam said:

Obviously the client doesn't qualify for the given visa or they would go to immigration. 

I'm amazed they get away with it! 

That's not automatically true.

 

Many use an agent to save themselves and their family a lot of time and hassle. 

 

Spend a day sitting in an immigration office with your spouse and child, so the spouse has to take a day off work and your child has to miss a day at school. 

 

Then they have to take another day off work and school to stay at home for the home visit. Don't forget to inform the neighbors to be at home because they're going to be interviewed!

 

Spouse, 2 days off work, kids, 2 days off school, one day lost to you all sitting around an immigration office, another day lost to sitting around waiting for your home visit and getting the neighbors interviewed.

 

If you're penniless, pay 1,900 baht and waste 2 days of your family's life, if not, pay xxxxx baht and waste 5 minutes handing over the docs to an agent. ???? 

 

[orchis]

a visa agency complaining about money grabbing. a bit 'rich'.

[P Funk]

An occasion for Saudi justice perhaps? Chopping off a hand or 2 might serve a greater purpose.

[ChrisKC]

For those of you that would like some reassurance about this story and the Company involved, please PM me.

[Caldera]

I appreciate that Thai Visa Centre is open about this thieving employee instead of stifling discussion by using Thailand's defamation laws to their advantage.

Sadly, that's  very unusual.

Kudos to you for getting him arrested and compensating affected clients of yours, @ThaiVisaCentre.

[ChrisKC]

49 minutes ago, orchis said:

a visa agency complaining about money grabbing. a bit 'rich'.

There is no need for this kind of bigoted remark. Please PM me if you want to know some real truth in the matter.

[Surelynot]

1 hour ago, Neeranam said:

 

Why don't they mention the nationity if the thief?

 

 

Good idea....then we can all pile in and make racist comments.

[donnacha]

3 minutes ago, Surelynot said:

Good idea....then we can all pile in and make racist comments.

Do you think that, if we knew his nationality, we might unfairly regard this guy as a thieving scumbag?

[ThaiVisaCentre]

1 hour ago, Neeranam said:

I get email and I'm a Thai citizen, very annoying. 

 

This is also possible if you used our ASQ Hotels services.

Initially we were unsure of how much he potentially had access to, and had to notify everyone while he was on the run to prevent him from potentially scamming them.

You should not receive any further communication.

[Eindhoven]

1 hour ago, Neeranam said:

Obviously the client doesn't qualify for the given visa or they would go to immigration. 

I'm amazed they get away with it! 

 

Rubbish! I used an agent simply because I did not and do not want to stand in queues and mingle with anyone during the whole COVID debacle. I went past a local Immigration office yesterday. Chockablock. No thanks. The money I can get back. My health is worth infinitely more. 

[Eindhoven]

9 minutes ago, ChrisKC said:

There is no need for this kind of bigoted remark. Please PM me if you want to know some real truth in the matter.

Why bother? A bigot is a bigot. It's a state of mind; they don't care about facts.

[ThaiVisaCentre]

7 minutes ago, donnacha said:

Do you think that, if we knew his nationality, we might unfairly regard this guy as a thieving scumbag?

He was from Pakistan not like it makes a difference.

We did a background check, checked his last employer/references, and even verified his attendance at Assumption University (ABAC).

He even had internal references... No one could have guessed.

Unfortunately we have to change our whole process to take into account that no one can be trusted.

Normally knowing that everything is logged is enough to prevent employees from making horrible decisions like this.

It's a very sad state of affairs, and this has caused us to double down on internal security.

[Surelynot]

5 minutes ago, donnacha said:

Do you think that, if we knew his nationality, we might unfairly regard this guy as a thieving scumbag?

Do you think that, if we knew this guy was a thieving scumbag, we could regard him as......Indian? Pakistani? Bengali?

[moontang]

18 hours ago, ThailandRyan said:

Well now the e-mail they sent me makes sense.  However, I have never used their services or requested information from them, so the bigger question is how they received my e-mail address.  Could the TV site have given it to them since they are an advertiser or do they have a mining program embedded on TV to funnel our personal information to them?

It seemed to mysterious coincide with the 90 day reporting app release, which according to Google had been hacked, causing a chain reaction of alerts on some retail accounts that I hadn't used in years, but had used the same password. Fortunately, I do not use Thai credit cards.. 

[Orton Rd]

1 hour ago, JeffersLos said:

That's not automatically true.

 

Many use an agent to save themselves and their family a lot of time and hassle. 

 

Spend a day sitting in an immigration office with your spouse and child, so the spouse has to take a day off work and your child has to miss a day at school. 

 

Then they have to take another day off work and school to stay at home for the home visit. Don't forget to inform the neighbors to be at home because they're going to be interviewed!

 

Spouse, 2 days off work, kids, 2 days off school, one day lost to you all sitting around an immigration office, another day lost to sitting around waiting for your home visit and getting the neighbors interviewed.

 

If you're penniless, pay 1,900 baht and waste 2 days of your family's life, if not, pay xxxxx baht and waste 5 minutes handing over the docs to an agent. ???? 

 

why go with a spouse and the kids anyway? It has never taken me more than an hour or so in 15 years. Agents do not normally do marriage extensions (apart from hand holding), just retirement ones. You have it the wrong way around the people with cash in the bank pay 1900 baht, the 'penniless' are the ones who pay an agent around 14k to get an extension without it. Although there are some who claim they do so as they are against lodging money in a Thai bank and having to put up with having no access to it. It's all a grey area, what ever people claim.