Welcome to Hell (3 page)

I called Spectac’s office in Holland and asked them to fax and telephone OCS in Chicago. Again, there was no answer.

It was at this stage that I began to panic.

18 of the men had returned with me to Bangkok; the others were due to arrive the next day. When they found out I hadn’t been able to contact OCS, they started to panic too.

I tried to calm the men down. I explained to them that there was no reason to get alarmed just yet. I told them that once I managed to speak with O’Connor, it would all be sorted out.

The truth was that I couldn’t even think straight. I continually tried to convince myself that O’Connor and OCS were legitimate. After all, someone not answering the phone wasn’t enough to start making accusations of criminality and fraud.

I tried to convince myself that I was wrong and just being paranoid.

I didn’t want to think I’d been so foolish as to trust a bunch of criminals. A company so businesslike and professional as OCS couldn’t turn out to be thieves. Could they?

We waited and waited, but still couldn’t get hold of O’Connor. There really wasn’t much we could do.

Nobody wanted to involve the police. I told myself that O’Connor was probably just out of reach for a while. Not exactly a crime.

Still trying to be rational, I said we should wait, at least a little bit longer. If O’Connor was missing then our money was too, but it was probably nothing. I tried to convince myself that O’Connor had simply taken a few days off. It was Christmas, after all.

Days went by, and we still heard nothing.

Christmas came and went, and I abandoned the idea of getting home to see my family. Throughout the holiday I kept trying O’Connor’s mobile and OCS’s offices but still couldn’t get any response from either.

I prayed and prayed. On December 27, I thought my prayers had been answered. Hadawji called to say she had received a fax from Chicago, from O’Connor.

The fax said he wished Spectac and its staff a merry Christmas. It also said that OCS hoped the New Year would be very prosperous, and that they looked forward to doing business with us.

It was all very businesslike.

I was bewildered. I clung to the hope that my gut instinct was wrong.

I told Hadawji to call Chicago and ask to speak to O’Connor. I told her to tell him to call me immediately.

She called back a few minutes later to say that when she introduced herself, O’Connor had hung up.

I didn’t need to know any more. I’d been conned. O’Connor had stolen nearly half a million dollars.

3

I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew I’d been taken for a fool. OCS had stolen $460,000. O’Connor had set me up. The whole deal had been an elaborate fraud. The offices, the personnel, the technical drawings. It was all a con.

I went straight to the police. They sent me to a department designated to deal with foreigners called the tourist police. I filed a complaint and was asked to come back the next morning, when an officer would be assigned my case.

Breaking the news to the men wasn’t easy. As you’d expect, they were pissed off but they weren’t as hostile as I’d expected them to be.

But they did blame me. They said I had got them into this mess and now I had to sort it out.

I asked some of the men to file complaints along with me, in the hope that it would be seen as a serious matter and more police would be assigned to the case. Out of the 30 men, only five agreed to make a statement. The others just sat back and expected me to take care of everything.

The following day, one of the men came with me to the police station. I also took a translator just in case there were problems with the police.

The police wanted to know every detail, from the advert in the Dutch newspaper to the final unanswered phonecall. They asked every question you could imagine. How much did my ticket cost? Where did I stay? Who did I meet? When did I pay the money? How much? Where? Where were the contracts? Where were the men?

The interrogation went on and on for hours and hours and hours. I was exhausted by the end of the day – but it was far from over.

The police ordered me to come to the station every morning. I would arrive promptly at 7.30 a.m. and they would keep me there until 6 p.m.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened and I blamed myself for being too anxious to make money and for taking short cuts.

To save my sanity, I started searching for the con men. It might have seemed like a futile exercise given the size of Bangkok, but it was all I could do.

After spending the entire day answering questions at the police station, I would spend another four or five hours simply going around Bangkok’s bars and restaurants with photos of O’Connor and Hayes.

I had copies of their passport photographs. I also got a photo of Hayes from a barmaid who used to be his girlfriend.

I did the same thing every night. I wasn’t about to give up looking. I was relentless in my pursuit.

Bangkok has thousands of motorcycle taxis, which go all over the city. I made copies of the photos and gave them to some of the motorcyclists. If they spotted O’Connor or Hayes and led me to either, I promised to pay a reward of 12,500 baht. That’s a lot of money to a Thai.

The offer of a reward certainly drew a response, but it failed to locate the criminals.

After a couple of days a taxi boy came to find me. He swore on his life that he’d seen Ronnie Hayes boarding a tour bus going to Pattaya, a town located about 100 km away.

I went with him on the back of his motorcycle all the way to Pattaya. It wasn’t much fun going 100 km on the back of a motorcycle without a jacket or helmet, but I couldn’t afford not to.

It turned out to be a wild goose chase.

Meanwhile I contacted the tourist police every day. I gave them every shred of evidence I could find.

I handed over every piece of correspondence that I had received from OCS: the contracts, the faxes, the bank guarantee. I even gave them my own bank records.

At one point, I became a suspect. Some of the men thought I was part of the deception and the police began to check up on me.

When the men heard about this, they started to suggest amongst themselves that maybe I should be locked up, just in case.

It didn’t seem to occur to any of them that if I’d wanted to steal their money I would have done it back at Schiphol Airport.

This allegation affected me more than anything. I’d been with the men every step of the way. Besides, most of the stolen money was mine. The men had lost only a few thousand each; I had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The truth was that they all wanted someone to blame, and they really didn’t care who it was.

The nearest Irish embassy was located in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. I had already contacted the Irish consulate in Bangkok but was told there was nothing that they could do.

I also got in touch with the British embassy in Bangkok. Most of the men were English, so I felt sure that at least they would get some help.

I was eventually allowed to speak with the ambassador. I explained everything that had happened in as much detail as possible. I also explained that the tourist police didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get their investigation going.

But the British ambassador wasn’t in a position to do anything to help us, and nor was the Irish consulate. If I was going to get my money back, I was going to have to take care of everything myself.

In the subsequent months, I sold everything that I owned. For my own watch I got 7,000 baht. For a signet ring from my mother, I managed to get 5,000 baht. Finally, I sold my wedding ring and a small gold identity bracelet for 8,000 baht.

I still had the Rolex given to me by O’Connor’s bogus Arab partner. As it was brand new and still in the box, I managed to get 40,000 baht for it. When I had sold everything, I bought airline tickets for the men and sent them home.

* * *

I vowed to find O’Connor and Hayes. I was angry and wanted revenge. I went to the police every day and demanded action.

After several weeks had passed, they said they could accept my complaint and issued warrants for the arrest of O’Connor and Hayes. But there was one condition: they would take action only if I agreed to remain in Thailand.

I’d have to identify the two fraudsters after their arrest, and then give evidence in court. Without a witness, they said, it would be a waste of their time.

Not really given much choice, I said I’d stay. I took whatever work I could get as a welder and made enough money to get by.

I’d given the police the copy of O’Connor’s Irish passport, complete with photo and serial number. I was told that if he left or entered Thailand, they would catch him.

Ronnie Hayes would be a little more difficult, but the police had his photo, so he wouldn’t get far either.

But it didn’t take me long to realise that the Thai police were corrupt and dishonest. They looked for bribes every time I met them. They were all untrustworthy and insincere.

I realised that if I was ever to get my money back I would have to find O’Connor and Hayes myself.

A month or so later, I got lucky. I was sitting outside a bar in an entertainment complex, reading a newspaper. It was about seven in the evening.

Glancing up from my paper, I noticed a man in a sharp suit, with a shock of grey hair. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Strolling right in front of me was Ronnie Hayes.

Not only was it him, but he walked as though he hadn’t a care in the world. He definitely wasn’t in hiding, or even trying to avoid being recognised. He looked exactly the same as he had when we meet two months previously.

I felt a mixture of excitement and terror at the prospect of facing him. I watched as he disappeared into a bar. Two or three of the motorcycle taxi boys had also seen him and came running. None of us could believe we had found him.

Not wanting to miss the chance, I walked into the bar and pulled up a stool beside him. When he saw me, his mouth dropped open.

‘Hello, Ronnie,’ I said. ‘I believe you have something that belongs to me.’

He regained his composure hastily, and made an effort to remain nonchalant.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.

I smashed him with a head butt.

I hit him again a few times, but the motorcycle boys pulled me away. It didn’t matter anyway; I had him and he wasn’t going anywhere.

I asked the barman to call the tourist police, and gave him the mobile number for the lieutenant in charge of my case.

The police arrived minutes later and Hayes stumbled out to their pick-up. The lieutenant told me that I shouldn’t have hit him.

I asked him what was I supposed to do? I told him that I wasn’t about to give him a chance either to fight or to run.

To be honest, it felt good to thump the bastard. He’d caused me a lot of pain. In that moment, I didn’t really care about the consequences of my actions, and I certainly hadn’t been thinking about the law.

Hayes tried to bluff his way out of custody. He said he thought O’Connor and OCS were genuine. He actually said he had nothing to do with the financial dealings of OCS and claimed that he was a victim too.

He said he’d quit working for OCS in December because they hadn’t paid him.

I didn’t believe a word of it. I told him that the police had already rounded up all the secretaries and office staff he and O’Connor had hired. I was lying through my teeth, but he didn’t know that.

Eventually I proposed a deal. If he returned his share of the money they’d stolen, and if he was willing to help the police to find O’Connor, then I would talk to his trial judge and say that he was only a small player in the scam.

I knew O’Connor was the boss. I wanted him more than Hayes.

It didn’t take Hayes long to betray his partner. Criminals are all the same. They’ll always sell each other out. He claimed that O’Connor had only paid him $80,000, of which he had spent some on a holiday, but that he still had $60,000 left – about 1.5 million baht.

Pleading for mercy, he said he would hand over all of it if I promised to keep to our agreement. I said I would.

The police agreed to the proposition and offered to take Hayes to the bank to withdraw the money. I said I would return the next day to collect the cash. I decided to bring a lawyer with me, just to make sure that everything was legal and above board.

This turned out to be a good idea.

When we got to the police station the next morning, Hayes had changed his mind. When he withdrew my 1.5 million baht from his account, the police had apparently seen their opportunity, and began to give him all sorts of advice. They actually told him that he didn’t have to return the money until after the court case.

They advised him to charge me with assault. And they also encouraged him to demand that I drop all charges against him before returning the stolen money.

I now found myself on the losing side once again – but there was no way I was going to drop the charges. I asked the lawyer for his advice.

Speaking with brutal honesty, my lawyer said I didn’t have a choice. If I didn’t drop the charges and take the money, then Hayes would use it to make bail, and get out anyway. If I wanted the money back, I was going to have to accept the deal.

Against my better judgement, I took the money and dropped the charges.

Nothing is what it seems in Bangkok. When it came to counting the money before signing for it, it was short. There was a lot missing – a little from each stack of bills, but totalling around 100,000 baht (US $400). The police had helped themselves.

There were two policemen in the room where I counted the money. They kept staring at me. I asked the lawyer what to do. He whispered that it would be best just to finish counting, take the money, and go. If we complained that there was money missing, it would mean the police would have to have an internal investigation, and they’d hold the money for longer.

It had only been in the police station overnight and there was 100,000 baht missing. I wondered how much would be missing by the end of the investigation.

After I finished counting the cash, I withdrew my complaint against Hayes. He had been using this pseudonymn for years, I found out, and was from New Zealand – not Australia. This was the reason, the police said, they hadn’t been able to find him.

Before finally withdrawing the charge, I made it clear to Hayes that any one of the 30 men could re-charge him at any time. I wanted him to know that he wasn’t home free. He was going to have to help find O’Connor whether he liked it or not.

This frightened him to the extent that he suddenly remembered where O’Connor lived, and where his favourite restaurants and bars were.

Thinking that they were going to earn more money, the investigation team offered to drive to O’Connor’s house and arrest him.

Hayes said O’Connor lived about 30 km away.

I waited in the patrol car while the officers went into the apartment. After about half an hour, they came back. They said O’Connor wasn’t there and had checked out.

But they said they would now place a spy there. They promised that if O’Connor ever returned to his apartment they would get him. He wouldn’t escape.

There wasn’t much more I could do.

I took some solace when I read the morning papers the next day. When I first started searching for O’Connor and Hayes, I contacted a number of journalists who highlighted my case. They had reported the original con and now they reported about how I had caught Hayes.

This prompted Hayes to leave Thailand the moment he was released from custody. His cover blown, he jetted off to destinations unknown.

Now the only thing left for me to do was wait for news of O’Connor.

There wasn’t any point in going back to Europe anyway. I had lost everything. The bank had taken my business and repossessed my house to pay back the money I’d borrowed. My wife had left me and taken our three children back to Ireland. I had nothing left but time on my hands.