Norwegian Man Living in Thailand Charged with Defrauding Gambling Regulator
A Norwegian national living and residing in Thailand has been charged with defrauding the Norwegian state, including its national gambling regulator for millions of euros. The shocking case highlights the lack of oversight and loopholes that exist in the COVID relief funds made available to citizens. The claims for compensation were made by the man in an attempt to defraud and cheat a system designed to relieve the financial pressures facing the people in the wake of the pandemic.
The Norwegian man at the center of this case has been accused of conducting a mass scam operation against the Norway government, using fake companies to make fraudulent COVID-19 economic relief claims.
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The Norwegian man in his 50s was caught making fraudulent ownerships of companies that didn’t even exist. The fake companies and the fictional paper wealth that the suspect was able to articulate in a legal context were used to convince the Norwegian government that he should be eligible for COVID relief funding to make up for a loss of revenue. The economic COVID relief systems have been an essential pillar used by governments around the world to help their citizens recover from the losses induced by the pandemic.
The scam operated by the Norwegian was quite ingenious in its execution, and once operational was easily scaled up to include many fictitious companies, and target multiple government agencies. Registering the companies in his own name, and his wife’s name made the complex paper trail even more difficult for the authorities in Norway to spot. Living in Thailand too must have made the man feel he was beyond the reach of the law, and given him confidence when spinning lies of lost revenue for the companies that didn’t even exist.
At the height of his claims, the man began to target all sorts of government agencies to maximize the amount of money he could claim. Through his various fictitious companies, he targeted the Arts Council of Norway to pay out no less than $1.4 million, and the Norwegian Gambling Foundation and Authority to pay out $800K in reimbursements. These two government agencies took a while to realize the scam that had been committed but soon began seeking a course of repatriating the lost funds.
European Scam Orchestrated from Thailand
This crime was an expert orchestration of an overseas fraud operation at scale. Worked from the perspective of a COVID relief application, the perpetrator was able to target 17 separate organizations with a unique application profile where the companies making the claim were all registered under addresses in Europe. Obviously, the fraudulent applications were from the same source, and the intention all along was to divert the funds back towards the claimant in Thailand.
When the law caught up with the Norwegian man in Thailand there was only the most severe punishment reserved for him. A sentence that extended over 3 years was handed down to the perpetrator, and the assets of the man have been stolen whilst law enforcement tries to ascertain the extent of the criminal activities carried out by the man. The intent is the key factor in the case, and Norwegian prosecutors will be seeking to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the man was actively trying to exploit the reimbursements system.
Whether or not the crime was able to be completed, so whether or not the money arrived back into the account of the criminal is neither here nor there. The fact that there was an intention to defraud to country’s reimbursement scheme is the only relevant article of information in this context. As the prosecutor highlighted, it was a mere moment of luck and coincidence that the money wasn’t paid out to the fraudster making the unjust claims.
The court tried to highlight that the defendant, in this case, has tried to exploit and take advantage of policies from the Norway gambling regulator that were designed to relieve the difficult economic situation that so many individuals and private companies were facing. These are procedures that require speed and trust to make them effective. Severe preventive measures must then be imposed on those that try to exploit this system, to ensure that it doesn’t happen again and preserve the integrity of the relief scheme.
