SET joins forces with partners to protect public from scams
The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) is joining forces with other agencies to educate small-time investors on how to protect themselves from investment scams that have been rampant on social networks, the exchange chief said.
SET president Pakorn Peetathawatchai said the general public and small-time investors have been losing about 11.5 billion baht a year in investment scams as they were deceived by online posts, making use of names and pictures of several organisations and their executives.
In certain scams, photos of celebrities or well-known persons were also used to lure people to invest in companies that do not exist and lose their money.
Pakorn said since the SET is a platform for investors, it has joined hands with other organisations related to the stock market to initiate the programme to detect and alert about investment scams.
In the first phase, the programme would aim to expose and isolate false news and investment scams that have been posted on online social networks.
The SET would also join hands with its partners to educate the public and small-time investors not to fall prey to such scams. The education would be aired via several media channels of the partners to try to reach as many people as possible, the SET president added.
In the next phase, the SET would work with its partners and government agencies to develop a system for fast and efficient detection of online investment scams, Pakorn added.
Meanwhile, Thawatchai Pittayasophon, acting secretary-general of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), said online investment scams posed a serious threat to the economy and had caused huge damage to the people.
Thawatchai welcomed the launching of the SET project and said the SEC itself had been carrying out several measures to try to protect the people from the scammers.
Kobsak Pootrakool, president of the Federation of Thai Capital Market Organisations, said that online investment scams were getting serious and the issues could not be dealt with by a single organisation.
He said it required cooperation among all organisations involved with the stock markets to fight the scammers. He praised the SET’s initiative as a good start for such cooperation.
Payong Srivanich, president of the Thai Bankers Association, said online investment scams have caused severe damage to the economy and commercial banks have come up with several measures to try to protect their clients from losing money.
Payong backed the effort to educate the people on how to detect online investment scams.
Angkhana Thepprasertwangsa, secretary and director of the Thai Listed Companies Association,said that listed companies’ names were often abused by scammers to deceive people and therefore the association would inform its members to monitor and inform the public accordingly.
The members of the association would also be informed to take legal action against the scammers,
Wirat Sukchai, president of the MAI (market for alternative investment) listed company association, said members of his association had been alerted to prevent the use of their names by online scammers to deceive people.
