Commerce to lay down measures to prevent travel scam

BANGKOK, April 14 (TNA) -- The Commerce Ministry, in response to Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha's call for it to host a meeting with concerned agencies to lay down measures to prevent anymore travel scams from reoccurring in the country. Commerce Minister Ms Apiradi Tantraporn said that since the incident of the WealthEver travel scam, which left more than 1,000 people stranded at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport two nights ago, the premier has expressed worries about the situation and has asked that a system be installed to inspect the process in advance as a move to prevent such incident from happening again in the country. She said the premier has then ordered and tasked the commerce ministry to come up with an immediate measures to prevent the incident from reoccurring again in the future, where the ministry should host a meeting with concerned agencies to integrate the operations to ensure that fraud businesses would not be able to take advantage of customers. The minister pointed out she has tasked the Department of Business Development (DBD) to oragnise the above mentioned meeting to lay down measures, directions to prevent and eradicate tour scams and related problems on April 18 with concerned agencies at the ministry. She stressed that apart from integrating operations between agencies which should help provide ease for data inspection, the meeting would also work out tougher punishments for fraud to eradicate the problem from Thailand. Fraud suspect Pasist Arinchayalapis, alias Sin Sae Shogun was arrested in Ranong province yesterday for the alleged travel scam, where she said she was innocent. Around 1,000 would-be travellers said they had paid for a cheap tour in Japan but were left stranded at the airport when there was no flight to take them there. The suspect owner of the WealthEver, a company registered under the commerce ministry as a wholesale distributor for diet supplement drinks said she has been operating an online business but never operated any tour company and that she was not selling any cheap tours or offering any free tours to other countries. The police is further investigating into the case.(TNA)