Thai Con Man Asks For Reduction In Sentence of 13,000 Years and Receives A Reduction By Half . . . To 6,637 Years

Pudit Kittithradilok, 34, was found guilty to running a Ponzi scheme based on investors artificially high financial returns.  A defendant would normally be delighted by a fifty percent reduction in his sentence, but Kittithradilok was sentenced to more than 13,000 years in prison.  His reduction left him with a hefty remainder of 6,637 years and six months.  Even with regular workouts in the prison yard, it would seem difficult to serve that time.

However, Thai law sets a maximum sentence of 10 years for each of the two different counts used against them.

The lengthy original sentence was based on the defrauding of 40,000 people to give Kittithradilok more than $160 million in some 2,653 counts of fraud. The reduction was due to his confession.  However, Thai law makes such sentences meaningless and he is likely to serve less than 20 years of his 6,637 sentence.

The court also hit his two companies with $20 million fines.

The sentence reminds me of the scene when a judge sentenced a middle aged man to 30 years only to have the defendant say “Judge, I am already 50, I can’t do that amount of time.” The judge looked down kindly upon the man and said, “That’s okay, just do as much as you can.”