Police charge video poster for online pool party sex video

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Pattaya police visit hotel management, trying to get to the bottom of a video posted online during a party at the A-One Royal Cruise hotel.
Pattaya police visit hotel management, trying to get to the bottom of a video posted online during a party at the A-One Royal Cruise hotel.

The Australian organizer of a scandal-hit Pattaya pool party said no one engaged in sexual activity, despite a viral video police called “pornographic”.

Coran Maloney, who runs the Kolour Entertainment firm that stages music-themed parties around Thailand, said Briton Daniel Smith, 33, and an unidentified Thai woman only simulated sex in the pool at the Aug. 18 party at the A-One Royal Cruise hotel.

Maloney said both people have been banned from future events.

Pattaya police, under pressure from the junta to stamp out anything publicly tawdry in a city with nearly 80 go-go bars, don’t seem to care. Even if no sex was committed and both people were fully covered, the video was still obscene, and someone has to pay.

Unable to charge the hotel, whose staffers tried to stop shooting of the video, and the organizer, who has all the correct documents and work permits, police “shot the messenger”, filing Computer Crime Act charges against 23-year-old Tatchadrit Wongleamthong for posting it online.

He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a 100,000 baht fine if a court determines the video of two people in swimsuits actually is pornographic.

Police said they also planned to summon Smith and the woman, who also could face a charge of spoiling Pattaya’s pristine image, which is punishable with a 1,000-baht fine.