The Video In August 2021, attorney Sittra Biebangkerd
saw a Facebook message on his message board.
He didn't know the sender but clicked on their message anyway.
Sittra saw the sender had sent him a video.
As he watched it, Sittra's hands shook, and his mind spun.
On his screen, a group of Bangkok police tied plastic bags over a man's head as he cried
and whimpered for mercy.
Eventually, the man stopped crying out.
When the police tried to save him, it was too late.
The mysterious sender told Sittra to share the video after he'd watched it.
He did, and the video went viral.
Many people were shocked at the sheer brutality, but more so by who they saw ordering the heinous
acts: Chief Thitisan Utthanaphon, also known as Joe Ferrari.
Why was that his nickname?
He's got 26 luxury cars, a mansion, and a famous wife.
And he was the police chief from Thailand, someone who made roughly $1700 per month.
The interrogation occurred on August 4th, 2021.
The sender was a junior police officer who somehow got a hold of the video.
He sent it to Sittra, hoping he'd bring its contents to court, as well as show the public
how corrupt their police are.
Sittra acted quickly.
He took action against Joe and had him arrested.
However, despite being in handcuffs, some strange things started happening after Joe's
initial detainment.
Press Conference Shortly after being arrested, Joe held a press
conference of sorts.
His main motive was to convey a message that he was innocent to the people of Thailand.
For days, Thailanders had seen the police chief's face on their tv and phone screens.
Next to him were headlines painting a very negative picture.
Joe tried to change those impressions by telling everyone he did not mean to hurt the man,
and he was only trying to get information.
One thing the speech could not properly explain, however, were the headlines describing Joe's
wealth, cars, and mansion.
It left people wondering where on earth it all came from.
The truth was almost as bizarre as the video.
Joe Ferrari Joe got his first taste of wealth when he
married a rich girl from Thailand.
By all accounts, Joe came from an ordinary family with a regular amount of money.
There's no doubt the sudden exposure to lavish wealth affected the young man.
In 2003, Joe graduated from the police academy, climbing his way up the ladder until he landed
the chief job.
During this climb, he married another well-off woman, a Thai actress.
Then, after she didn't work out, he married another Thai actress, a well-known tv presenter
whose father is a senior police officer in Thailand.
On the surface, Joe seemed like a respectable police chief who happened to be in with the
celebrity crowd.
But also on Joe's surface, protruding out like a luxurious pimple, was his car collection,
and the reason he's nicknamed after an Italian automaker.
If you were lucky enough to know Joe before he was arrested, you probably saw his car
collection.
Joe had a Ferrari, of course.
But that wasn't the highlight of his garage.
He had a rare Lamborghini Aventador, four porches, three Audis, and six Mercedes Benz.
To add an elegant touch, Joe also had a Bentley.
Even though he was married to a successful actress, a car collection like that seemed
suspicious.
His Lambo cost six figures alone!
So, how did Joe accumulate all this money?
Finders Fee The police system is different in Thailand.
They have something called the finders fee that allows certain officers to take a cut
from discovering and turning in stolen cars.
It works like this: an officer will turn a car over to the government, who, after a trip
through the court system, puts the vehicles up for public auction.
For whatever price these cars sell for, the officer who turned the car in gets a 25% cut.
Informants get 30%.
Which means if Joe turned over a confiscated Ferrari, and that Ferrari sold at auction
for $200,000, Joe would pocket $50,000.
However, recent laws have lowered those payouts to 20% each to officers and informants.
Still, the finders fee can double, triple, or quadruple an officer's salary if they're
lucky enough.
The reason officers earned a quarter of the auction sale was partly because of the informants.
The people smuggling these cars could be very dangerous.
Many of them worked for millionaires and billionaires, helping them save thousands in taxes by smuggling
their expensive four-wheel purchases into Thailand.
They paid good money, meaning the security was willing to do whatever it took to get
the cars from point A to point B.
The Thai government offered the finders fee to incentivize cops like Joe to risk their
lives to stop them.
Overall, authorities estimate that Joe confiscated 410 cars and cashed in on 405 of them, earning
the police chief around $24 million.
These numbers puzzled investigators on multiple levels.
The first level being: how did Joe manage to confiscate that many cars?
After tracing the cars' collective history, investigators determined that many were stolen
before being collected by Joe and his officers.
With this new information, investigators believe Joe may have been involved in the smuggling
himself or worked with smugglers.
The numbers corroborate their theory.
Of the first 270 cars confiscated, 101 were reported stolen before their seizure by police.
And 169 more cars were reported stolen after being seized.
Many of these cars were smuggled into Thailand from nearby Singapore and Malaysia.
Given the close proximity, the likelihood of an international scam is pretty good.
Some investigators even believe the buyers, the people at auction, were stealing the cars,
having them smuggled into Bangkok, seized by police, then bought at auction for a lower
price.
While this scheme may seem like the sole source of Joe's mysterious wealth, investigators
in Thailand think there may be more to the mystery than just car smuggling.
When added up, authorities don't think the car scheme is enough to account for all of
Joe's lavish spending.
They think he was receiving money from another source.
Life of Bribes During his press conference, Joe claims he
was trying to get information when he hurt the man who eventually passed away.
So, what kind of information was he looking for?
Aside from his success in the stolen car business, Joe was also known for his tough stance on
illicit drugs.
When trying to explain why he engaged the man so viciously, Joe says he did so to extract
essential information from a drug dealer.
A few Bangkok officers paid a visit to the dealer's house, posing as customers.
The twenty-four-year-old dealer and his wife tried to sell the undercover cops drugs, resulting
in their immediate arrest and detainment.
Then, they questioned the young man.
Joe said he wanted to find out who his supplier was or if he was supplying other dealers.
While those sound like good intentions, many investigators have serious doubts about Joe's
claims.
Given the excessive force Joe put into the interrogation, some say the ex-chief asked
for more than mere information.
Instead, they believe, Joe was trying to shake the dealer for a bribe.
To most of us, corrupt officials attempting to commit bribery comes off as scandalous.
But for the people of Thailand, it's a cliche image.
They often experience, sometimes personally, low-level officers trying to use their position
to get rich quickly.
This kind of corruption occurs so often that, according to Paul Chambers, an expert from
the center of ASEAN Community Studies at Naresuan University, police have become a significant
component of the Thai political power structure.
According to Chambers, the police act like a mafia-type organization.
And much like Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese's gangster classic, many young men in Thailand
dream of being a Thai police officer.
Through extortion, even a low-ranking officer can make more money than their annual salary
paid to them by the state.
How exactly?
By arresting members of the vast drug industry and giving them a simple but gracious ultimatum:
go jail or pay me and I'll let you go.
And since many dealers carry around cash or know someone who has access to it, the latter
is often an easier choice to make.
Since most of these bribes are made in cash, calculating the payments is difficult for
investigators.
So, we may never know how much bribe money Joe collected over his career.
Tightrope The official leading the inquiry into the
six officers, National Police Commissioner General Suwat Jang­yod­suk, promised to
speed the process up and get a conviction as soon as possible.
So far, they've been charged with coercion and abuse of authority.
The most severe charg buhe came from what happened in the viral video.
Among them are many malfeasance-related charges, which means wrongdoing by a public official.
Joe and his officers are also accused of covering up the incident.
On the initial report for the drug dealer, which has since been corrected, his cause
of passing was "possible toxicity of amphetamine."
And to make matters worse for Joe, he reportedly went on the run when the video was released.
If these charges hold up, the six officers, including Joe, could be facing capital punishment
under Thai law.
The people in Thailand who watched the video were horrified, similar to America's reaction
to the George Floyd footage.
Secrets Revealed These days, at the top level of a multi-level
parking garage in Bangkok, are several Lamborghinis, Porsches, McLarens, Bentleys, and BMWs that
Joe supposedly confiscated.
These vehicles will eventually be sold at auction.
But Joe won't receive his cut.
Ironically enough, there actually aren’t any Ferraris.
They sit there, in the dark, wearing a coat of dust.
Their tires are flat, and they're soaking in a shallow pool of soupy rainwater.
Perhaps these seemingly forgotten cars are the last remnants of a decade-long scam that
would still be unknown if not for a viral video.
As his gang of officers is investigated in the coming years, Joe's secrets will be revealed,
whatever they may be.
It's only a matter of time.
Click to watch one of these next videos!
And let us know in the comment section what you think Joe Ferrari should have done to
not get caught!