What happened
In September 2022, five foreign men cornered a couple in a café on Koh Samui. They punched and threatened the husband, grabbed at his phone, and spoke of the safety of his family and young child. Under that pressure he used his own phone to convert USD 50,000 — about THB 1.88 million at the rate of the day — into bitcoin and transferred it to a wallet one of the men controlled. The group then left by van and motorbike and took the ferry off the island.
The defendant was not in the café. He was the man who had borrowed the van, driven the group south, rented the rooms and the motorbikes, and booked the ferry out. The prosecutor charged him as a joint offender in gang robbery with the use of a vehicle (Criminal Code sections 340 and 340 ter), coercion (section 309) and assault, and asked the court to order the bitcoin, or its value, returned to the victim.
The defence, and the question for the court
The defence did not dispute the events so much as the law. Its argument ran: the Bank of Thailand itself says that cryptocurrency is not legal tender and that people who deal in it are not protected as users of financial services. If bitcoin is not money and has no legal standing, then nothing of value was taken — there was no "property" of another person, so the elements of robbery were not met.
That put a single question of law before the Supreme Court: does a cryptocurrency have value of a kind that makes taking it "taking the property of another" under the Criminal Code?
What the court held
The Supreme Court, sitting in plenary, answered yes. Three strands of reasoning carried the decision.
- It is defined by law. The Emergency Decree on Digital Asset Businesses B.E. 2561 (2018) defines a cryptocurrency as an electronic data unit created on an electronic system or network, intended for use as a medium of exchange for goods, services or other rights, or for exchange between digital assets.
- It is priced by the market. The court read the Bank of Thailand's own letter in the file: cryptocurrency is volatile and partly driven by speculation, but it is a medium of exchange with a market value, it can be converted to cash where there is a buyer, anyone may hold it, and its price can be checked on public market sites.
- It is supervised. Digital-asset businesses, including the trading of cryptocurrency, operate under the supervision of the Securities and Exchange Commission under the same Decree.
- The conclusion. What the victim lost was money converted into a cryptocurrency that "has form" on an electronic system or network. It has a price and can be possessed, in an amount no less than the money transferred. It is not without value and not without form. The money that was transferred is therefore property, and the elements of a property offence are complete.
On the facts, the court found the evidence of the victim, his wife and a third witness consistent on the essentials, with no prior quarrel that could explain a fabricated story. The forced conversion from dollars into bitcoin before the transfer was read as a step that made the money harder to trace — part of the pattern of coercion, not a sign of a voluntary payment. The use of the van and motorbikes to leave made the robbery an aggravated one.
The outcome
- Conviction upheld through three courts. The Court of First Instance, the Court of Appeal Region 8 and the Supreme Court all found the defendant guilty as a joint offender in gang robbery with the use of a vehicle, the most serious of the overlapping charges.
- Ten years. Fifteen years, reduced by one-third because the defence's evidence assisted the trial.
- Restitution in coin or in baht. The defendant must return bitcoin worth USD 50,000 — 2.480801 BTC — or its value in Thai baht, THB 1,878,000, at the time of the transfer.
What it changes for digital-asset operators
- Every property offence now reaches crypto. Theft, extortion, fraud, embezzlement, robbery: the argument that a coin is "not property" is closed. A dispute over coin held for a customer, or taken from one, is a property matter in the ordinary sense.
- Value is fixed at the moment of transfer. The court valued the loss in fiat at the exchange rate of the day and ordered restitution in coin or that baht amount. Operators that keep records of the fiat value at the time of each transfer will have what a court or claimant later asks for.
- Conversion before transfer reads as concealment. The court treated the forced fiat-to-crypto step as a move to hinder tracing. For transaction monitoring that is a typology: fiat in, coin bought on the customer's own device, everything sent out to a new address within the same session.
- Duress is a red flag the platform may be the only one to see. This transfer never touched a Thai-licensed operator, as far as the decision records: the victim converted on his own account. If the next one does, the question for the operator is whether its monitoring saw a coerced transaction and whether anyone could have paused it.
Where to start
- Monitoring. Add a buy-and-sweep scenario: a fiat deposit or card purchase followed by an outbound transfer of the full amount to a previously unseen address within minutes.
- Front line. Train support staff to recognise a customer under pressure, and give them a call-back step before a large first-time withdrawal is released.
- Policy and records. Write cryptocurrency into the asset definitions of your policies as property: the valuation date for losses, how restitution is calculated, and which records are kept to show the fiat value at the time of each transfer.
The map of who regulates what in Thailand, including the SEC's supervision of digital-asset businesses, is on the landscape page.
The series
Case briefs are short reads on court decisions that change how a regulated firm must run. One decision per brief, no names, the reasoning in plain words, and what to do about it.
Frequently asked questions
- Is cryptocurrency legal tender in Thailand?
- No. The Bank of Thailand's position, which the court quoted, is that cryptocurrency is not legal tender. The Supreme Court held that this does not stop it being property: it has a market value, can be converted to cash, can be held by anyone and is supervised by the SEC.
- What does "property" mean here?
- The court found that cryptocurrency has form on an electronic system or network, has a price and can be possessed. Taking it is taking the property of another, which is the element that theft, robbery and the other property offences in the Criminal Code require.
- Why was this robbery and not fraud?
- Because the transfer was obtained by force and threats — punches, grabbing at the phone and threats to the family — rather than by deception. Force or the threat of force to make someone hand over property is robbery; with three or more offenders it is gang robbery, and the use of a vehicle to commit it or escape makes it aggravated.
- How was the amount fixed?
- At the value of the money the victim converted: USD 50,000, about THB 1,878,000 at the exchange rate of the day, equal to 2.480801 BTC. The court ordered the bitcoin or that baht amount returned.
- Does the decision say anything about exchanges or wallet providers?
- No. The transaction was made on the victim's own account and the decision does not say which platform was used. The brief's points for operators are ComplyWise's reading of what the decision implies, not findings of the court.
Sources
- Supreme Court of Thailand, Decision No. 4929/2569 (plenary): cryptocurrency is property; gang robbery conviction upheld (Supreme Court decision search system)
- Emergency Decree on Digital Asset Businesses B.E. 2561 (as amended to No. 2 B.E. 2568), s. 3 (unofficial SEC translation)
- Criminal Code, ss. 309, 340 and 340 ter — coercion, gang robbery and the use of a vehicle (Office of the Council of State, unofficial translation)
- Civil and Commercial Code, s. 137 — definition of property (Office of the Council of State, unofficial translation)
Accessed and last reviewed . Each figure and table cell is traced to a source above.