Chapter 1: Nong
“Baaaammmm!!!!!” The buzzer went off. Immediately, I opened my eyes and knew that it was 5am in the morning. Just like the last 9 years, 3 months and 24 days, I joined my cellmates in washing up and got ready for our morning run. 10 minutes later the gate was opened and I joined 200 other men and walked down the staircase towards the basketball courts. We exchanged our usual greetings. Some were more friendly than others but we speak no more than what we should.
Prison life was not like how the movies were showing. People generally got along. Sure there were occasional fights and quarrels but no one was trying to kill one another or rape another in the ass (at least not always). Conditions were harsh but the inmates kept the place clean and made it far easier than imagined to live. The days were generally uneventful. It was just prison.
We proceeded directly to breakfast directly after the run. After collecting my food which was just 3 pieces of plain bread, I sat down in front of Yut. We exchanged normal greetings and spoke in casual conversation just like any other inmates. It took me a while to learn Thai but I was a natural linguist although it took me 3 years to learn how to engage in an argument in the language. My language philosophy is if you can’t argue with the language, you do not know the language. As I finished my last bite, Yut stood up and got ready to leave but not before looking me in the eyes and giving me that faithful nod which I have been faithfully waiting.
Since 5 years ago, I had gotten myself a job as a teacher in the prison but it was definitely not easy getting that job. It was the very first time in prison that an inmate worked as a teacher (they refused to call me lecturer) for business management. I had to pull every single trick up my sleeve to convince the Warden to start this program.
Every inmate gets a half an hour meeting with the Warden every half year. I recalled that faithful day where I had my 7th session with the Warden. It started off just like any other conversation with him asking how was I coping prison life. 2 minutes into our conversation, I could sense there was something wrong with him. After all, I was a trained psychiatrist. I decided to pry into what was wrong. The trick to getting personal information was easy. You have to follow just two rules. Repeat what the other person said and wait for your opportunity.
Me: (conversation all in Thai) Sir, I’m doing just fine here and I would like to thank you for taking care of me over the last 3 years. I thought since I’m going to be here for another 15 years, I want to ask you how can I make life meaningful throughout this period
Warden: Ngoi, you can start thinking about what you want to do after you go out of prison and maybe learn some skills over here (usual standard answer)
Me: Thank you sir. I never thought of that I could learn some skills here.
Warden: Maybe you could start a teaching business in the future. Maybe teaching others how to manage their businesses or finances since you said you have managed a business before (again, very condescending. It’s 15 years later! Who the fuck knows what is going to happen)
Me: Thank you sir. Starting a business could be a could idea (see, always repeat)
Warden: Yes, many businesses these days are failing because the owners do not know how to manage them (maybe we are onto something)
Me: Sir, are you sure many businesses are failing?
Warden: Yes. My family runs a small printing business in Bangkok. Our accountant tells us we are growing and making money but the business always do not have enough cash. Our suppliers are always chasing us (Yes! Finally!)
Me: Not enough cash? That is a real problem. Can you tell me more?
The Warden was then a 42 year-old man. He was of average height perhaps 170cm, had a small belly but was largely a fit guy. He had a rather soft character for a prison warden and had come through the ranks through sheer hard work backed by good academic records. Many would describe him as a kind man who cares for his inmates. He had strong ambitions but generally lacked the brains and character to climb further. While he was relatively young, his peers would see the Warden position as a retirement job for him.
The Warden spent the next 45 minutes (and we clearly overran) describing to me the business and the issues they were facing. Basically, it was a pure working capital management issue. Work-in-progress inventory was too high and cash conversion cycle too long. As the warden continued his problem, he started to digress into more personal issues. He loves his job as a warden but at the same time has to look after the family business – which he wasn’t managing properly. Often his salary was used to cover business expenses. Gone were the holidays which he and his wife enjoyed as bonuses were used to pay salaries of his workers. The more he said, the more I repeated. The more I repeated, the more he said. Soon, it was more than 2 hours into our session. Rapport was now built and the next step was to create trust. Unlike women, men need solutions.
Me: Sir, I am going to offer you some humble suggestions and I think it will help you turn things around in less than 3 months. If it works, we can speak more.
So I went on for 15 mins in a step-by-step proposal. Nothing spectacular. Just plain old textbook solutions.
Warden: Ngoi, thank you for offering your suggestion. I will think about it (back to his warden self)
Me: Sir, please do not say that. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to offer my suggestions. Today has been a wonderful session.
After that chat session, life as back to normal. Running, breakfast, performing menial tasks, lunch, free time, run again, more menial tasks, dinner, rest time, sleep. Life was pretty boring for the next 2 weeks until we had a new inmate – Nong and he was the beginning of my nightmare.
Nong was a rising star in a local gang. He was 35 years old, tall at 180 cm. He was tanned and looked very fit. Apparently he took the rap for his boss for the murder of a family of 6. Rumours were his boss’ wife was found having a relationship with another married man. In a fit of anger, he massacred the entire family, including am 80-year-old and 3 children aged 5, 8 and 12. It was a gruesome scene. Nong ‘turned’ himself in for the crime and during the court hearing, the weapons and fingerprint record suddenly went missing. Nong’s lawyer argued the killing was done in self-defence. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison for manslaughter. He had an understanding with his boss that he would take over as leader of the gang when he would be released.
Nong has a particular dislike for non-Thais and just how many foreigners do you think there are in a Thai prison. I made a very strong effort to avoid Nong at all cost. His gaze would seem to pierce my heart like a thousand daggers. But as the saying goes, where there’s a will, there’s always a way.
One day during the afternoon rest time, I had the urge to do a major business. As I slipped away from the rest to my cell, I realized that was the worst mistake. Nong and 5 other guys had been following my every move, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. Once I was inside my cell, two of them grabbed me – one by each arm. What happened in the next few minutes was a total confusion for me. Punches and kicks landed on my face, chest and stomach. At some point I felt the worst pain in my entire life as my ribs cracked and that was when I lost all control.
I shitted myself in the pants.
That didn’t stop the 6 men. They wanted to humiliate me, destroy my very existence. I could almost feel their hate piercing through the skins into my bones. One of the men removed my pants and stuffed the entire load of shit into my face. They were not afraid of dirt. They just needed to destroy me. Nong forced my mouth open and made sure I swallowed at least a mouthful of my own poop. It was disgusting beyond words.
Yes, I ate my shit.
I ate my shit. I ate my shit. I ate my shit. Every night I would scribble these 4 words into a small notebook. I made sure I relieved the nightmare every night until the day I could have my revenge. Life was a living hell after that incident. I would vomit in the middle of the night. Sometimes, I would just wake up and cry and asked myself what has happened to my life. Most of the time though, I was just dazed.
Chapter 2: The Plan
1 month after the incident with Nong, I was unexpected called to the warden’s office. The incident had completely mind-fucked me and only the warden words reminded me of our earlier conversation.
Warden: Ngoi, I would like to thank you for your advice. The business is now making money. For the first time, we are seeing a positive bank balance.
Me: Thank you sir
Warden: Ngoi, I heard about your incident with Nong and I’m sorry for you. I will tell the guards to make sure you are protected
Me: Thank you sir
Warden: Ngoi, I hope you can offer me more advice. In return, I will help to make your stay in prison more comfortable
The warden’s words somehow jolted like an alarm, forcing me to wake up from my nightmare. My brain started to work. The endorphins were in production. I felt excited and began the planning of the greatest plot ever in Thai prison history. I wanted to stay safe, I wanted to get back at Nong, I wanted revenge, I wanted more! I had no idea where I plucked my courage from but those were my exact words
Me: Sir, my advice will make your business great. It will even give you time to perform your warden job which you love. If you continue to follow my advice, I will guarantee you will become the next Commissioner in no time. But I would want just one thing for now
Warden: What is it
Me: Always have a guard looking at me. When I walk away, they follow. When I sleep, they are outside my cell
Warden: Done
Me: Thank you sir
In the next 6 months, the warden and I worked out business plans. I would be in his office for 2 hours every day. The word put out was I was seeing a counsellor after my incident with Nong. With my advice, we turned the operations around. With the profits and cash flowing, he hired a CEO to continue running the business. The next thing we did was to put the business into a trust. That way, his family continued to own the business and he could focus on his warden job.
With the help of the warden, the guards kept a close watch on me. They followed me everywhere I went and that pissed Nong off. I was happy that I was kept safe.
The warden told me that the current commissioner was retiring and there were few warden eyeing the top job. He went on describing his colleagues in other prisons, including their strengths and weaknesses. I asked him to build a personal profile of these people and I studied them carefully.
The first thing I asked the warden to do was to create an exchange program where the different wardens would visit one another in their different prisons and have some interview sessions with the inmates. That would help me understand the competition better and also allowed me to mapped out the environment which they operate in. Over the course of the next few months, I met all of the other Wardens and had a chat with all of them. It was not difficult to make an assessment out of their capabilities, motivations, strengths and weaknesses. By then, the Warden’s business was raking in tons of cash. The very first year after we turned it around, cash profits were at THB25m. I asked the wWrden to hire several private investigators to understand more about the other wardens. All these while, Nong continued to keep a close watch on me. As if my new found confidence is a thorn in his flesh, he and his men continued to follow and watch me. I decided I had to take a more proactive approach.
I asked the Warden for access to all the inmates record. The first record I looked up was obviously Nong’s. His file was quite usual, normal gangster record. He has a wife 8 years younger and 2 children – aged 2 and 4. Every day, I sat in the files record room for 20 minutes. Looking at files after files. After 2 weeks, I found what I was looking for and started my approach.
My first approach was Kai and Teem – twin brothers who were jailed for manslaughter. According to the files, Kai’s and Teem’s mother was in poor health. Their father was a former muay-thai champion but was also a violent alcoholic. Despite his addiction to alcohol, Kai’s and Teem’s father taught everything he knew about muay-thai to his two sons and they grew to be experts in their field. While the brothers were good at boxing, they didn’t understand the concept of attracting students to their school. Most of the time, they fought others for a fee but as the sport attract fewer visitors, they were mostly making ends meet.
Kai’s and Teem’s mother’s health has always been poor. The brothers often took turns to bring their mother to the doctor and it was that night when they came back from the doctor, they found their father ransacking the house for money to buy alcohol. When there was none, he started shouting. The shouts turned into slaps, the slaps turned into punches and the brothers seeing their mother suffered, simply retaliated. What started as a domestic violence case quickly soured and the brothers ended up killing their father. Just 2 weeks ago, Kai and Teem’s mother was diagnosed with heart failure. Doctors estimated she could live another 5 more years unless she has a heart transplant.
Quietly but sternly, I told the brothers my plan.
Kai: 3 years? We will hold you to your word. If your promise do not materialize in 3 years, we will kill you with our bare hands
I swallowed a gulp
Me: You have my word. In the meantime, within these 3 years, you have to protect me at all cost.
Teem: Deal
Life became a lot easier after Kai and Teem joined my ranks. Nong and his men began to stay away and I decided to approach my next target.
Somchai was jailed for a white-collar crime, basically hacking into the central bank trying to steal $100m. He was caught and jailed for 7 years. Ram was a former investment banker and was jailed for 7 years for money laundering and insider trading. Finally, there was Yut a former public relations manager for one of the MNC in Thailand. Yut was jailed for 20 years for cocaine trading (a side profession he had started when he was 14). It took the police 20 years to nab him. All 3 were sold on my plan. After all, they had nothing to loose.
Concurrently, my plan with the Warden was executing smoothly. He was taking my advice to pick up golf, change his dressing, got a club membership and took the senior executives of the force out for entertainment. After all, it was all a political game. His new found wealth helped a great deal. The problem so far was I remained dispensable and I needed to change that.
They say that money breeds greed and it is all true. Profits generates tax and tax has to be paid in cash. 20% of THB25 million was about THB5 million.This scared the shit out of the Warden and he came to me for help. I told him that tax evasion is illegal but I had a solution. It involved setting up a fictitious account through some SPVs and moving the money around such that it creates a smokescreen of minimal profits. This, however, cannot be disclosed as it would prove dangerous for him. To get around, I would be doing it for him together with Somechai and Ram. We would assume all liabilities so the tracing if any would be kept within us and not the Warden. I assured the Warden that since we are already in jail, no further harm could come to us. The only thing we required was access to the internet and a few high speed computers.
To cover our whereabouts, I convinced the Warden to set up an academic program with my entourage assisting me. This would be killing two birds with one stone. First this program would gain him the visibility amongst the very top echelon of society, showing how he truly cares for the rehabilitation of his inmates. Second, and beneath the very façade of teaching, the team began a tapping and playing the financial markets. First, Somchai created a number of offshore entities based in the Bermuda, British Virgin Island and the Cayman Islands. Next, he created a number of new identities for each one of us. For complete tax avoidance, money has to be moved on a daily basis and basically I was back to my old trade.
As we have complete access to the Warden’s fund, we decided to put the funds into better use instead of just transferring them around across the world. Ram and I set up a few funds that targeted at liquid assets or instruments in case we needed to liquidate them for the Warden’s use. I was initially skeptical about Ram’s intelligence but he soon proved me wrong. The teamwork between Ram and I was beyond what words can describe. During the day, I would teach while Ram does the researches. In the evening as soon as the US market opens we began trading. In the meantime, Yut would prepare my teaching materials for the next day. Kai and Teem would keep our physical selves safe from the threats of Nong and gang.
In less than 9 months, we had accumulated more than USD25 millionin our funds, which means we no longer need the Warden’s funds and started investing in different classes of assets. Having money was, however, not enough. I have the de facto control of the Warden but I need the prison under my control. Turning to other mastermind, Yut and I started to develop a set of marketing program. As the class I taught was gaining more and more popularity, we began to educate the inmates the importance of financing and investing. The guards also began participating in my class and we were soon having a lot of fun discussing about wealth and investing.
We struck when the iron was hot and began to market our funds to a few selected inmates and the guards. They were initially skeptical but we were opened to accepting from THB2500 to any amount. It was not as if we needed the money. By the end of 2006, our fund had made a return of 15x and we had amassed total wealth of USD300 million. All the guards are now participating in our program and more than 60% of the inmates have money invested in our funds. All money invested had generated more than enough profits to cover the capital cost. Almost everyone was on our payroll now. As I was looking at the returns on the computer screen one day, I received a surprise email. I read it 3 times and had to calm myself down for I was shaking. Quickly I ran to Kai and Teem and called the both of them into the computer room.
Somchai, Ram and Yut joined us as we started reading the email. It was written in English so I had to translate to Thai for Kai and Teem but the pictures painted more than a thousand words. The pictures showed Kai and Teem’s mother recuperating at the John Hopkins Hospital in the US where she had a heart transplant. We have engaged 3 full-time caregivers for her and one of the pictures showed her taking a stroll in the garden. This was a stark difference from 2.5 years ago where she was all skin and bones with a few years of lifespan left. The brothers could not say anything and were trying to fight back all the tears that was welling up in their eyes. I gave them a hug and it was then they started sobbing. The rest hugged the three of us and soon there was laughter in the room. Almost without hesitation, we began discussing our next course of action.
They say things happened in the most unexpected way. I say things only happen with the most meticulous planning and flawless execution. When Nong took the rap for his boss, his family was taken care of by the gang. The highest form of respect was given to Nong and his family. Apart from monthly allowance, his wife and son lived in a posh condominium right in the heart of Bangkok. Gang security, driver and nanny were part of the package. While Nong’s wife was a ravishing beauty, any dirty thoughts about here would be met by penalty of the worst kind. Rumours were one of the gang member was caught peeking at her taking a shower, his eyes were gouged out and legs broken. All this was about to change.
After years of research about gangs (such information is massive in the prison), we figure the best way to weed out a gang is through alliances. With the amount of fortune we have amassed, it was not difficult to convince rival gangs to target Nong’s gang but it was not going to be that simple. They had to wait for the right time. Our next biggest alliance was none other than the police. After months and months of planning, the police mounted the biggest operation on Nong’s gang. More than 300 policemen armed with heavy assault weapons were activated and a division of riot police stood by as back up. The operations was a huge success for the police. Money, drugs, weapons were confiscated and more importantly the top leadership of the gang were arrested. As if things were not bad enough, the rival gangs, upon my activation all mounted a massive attack on Nong’s gang. It was a bloodbath. Most gang members were killed or seriously injured. Nong’s gang was destroyed. What was left were a few members incapable of anything. With no money, no men, Nong’s wife and son were evicted out of their home.
Revenge would come on this fateful day when Nong’s boss was sentenced to the very prison I was in. On that fateful day, I would ask the guards to switch off all CCTVs and take a break for 4 hours. 15 men were on standby outside the visiting room. Visitation was suspended for the day with the exception of Nong and his boss. Both Nong and his boss had only one visitor – Nong’s wife or also known as Aae.
Even after childbirth, Aae was still a top notch beauty. Her skin was flawlessly fair. She had a model height at 170cm and ample 36C breast to go with it. Childbirth only accentuated her figure with ample butt but her waist was spared at 25 inches. In short, she had the face of an angel and the figure of the worst devil you can ever imagine. She can be every bloody straight man’s wet dream.
No sooner had Aae sat down the entrance was locked behind her. By the time Nong sensed something was wrong it was too late. I made my way into the room with Kai and Teem beside me. The brothers pulled a chair for me and another beside me. Nong’s boss also known as Sam was invited to sit as well. Clearly a man of composure, he did not hesitate to sit and observed. In almost an instant all 15 men outside charged into the room. 2 grabbed Aae by the arms and pinned her down while 4 men held Nong onto his chair, stripped him and tied him up with his hands around the table and his legs spread apart. Aae was crying and screaming but no one could help her. Sam tried to stand up to interfere but was held back by Kai and Teem. I walked over to Nong and whispered in his ear
Me: This is revenge…