MotoGP Rides. Chiang Mai - KL

DavidFL

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Chiang Khong
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April 1995. Chiang Mai - KL.
3 days.
Day 1 Chiang Mai - Hua Hin
Day 2 Hua Hin - Hatyai.
Day 3 Hatyai - KL

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One of the few banners

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"The Chiang Mai Motorcycle Touring Club" forerunner to GT Rider.
Good times & golden days indeed.

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a good butch of characters too!

The guy on the right Ian Travis, murdered - shot down in broad daylight on Sukhumvit road not too long after.

Foreign conman's murder seals the mystery

Nation Thailand news website, thai news, thailand news, Bangkok thailand, aec, breaking news : Nation Thailand

THE ENIGMATIC life of New Zealander Ian Travis ended abruptly on Friday, March 1 in Bangkok, when he was gunned down by a hit man for the paltry sum of Bt40,000.
The crop-haired, military enthusiast was driving a BMW and had US$15,000 (Bt654,000) in his pocket when he was struck by five bullets. But even then, the muscular Travis managed to crawl 200 metres before his Thai wife drove him to hospital, where he later died.
Financially, he had come a long way from the man who arrived penniless in the Thai capital about 12 years ago, friends said. But they also said that Travis had stooped too low to create his high-rolling lifestyle. "The Ian who was killed last week was not the Ian we knew. The money turned him," said one. "If he was persuading little old ladies in Australia to part with their life savings, then he'd sunk lower than I thought. He was a crook, let's be honest." A key figure in Bangkok's "boiler room" scam industry, the smooth-talking Travis was a masterful telephone swindler, said ex-employees of Foreign Currency International (FCI), otherwise known as Global Options Co, or a dozen other titles as the company kept changing names to avoid detection. "Ian was one of the best telephone salesmen. He could get people to the bank in an hour," said one former "broker" who worked with Travis, cold-calling New Zealanders and Australians and persuading them to invest their life savings in foreign currency deals, options and shares or whatever seemingly lucrative trade was the flavour of the month. After a few successful returns on small amounts, clients were eventually persuaded to invest larger ones. Most never saw their money again. Travis worked with the company's owners, James and Michael Muller - two Americans now key suspects in his slaying. In the Bangkok trading rooms that shifted locations frequently, Travis managed the trading floor, barking orders at backpackers and expatriates flown in from the UK in search of quick money. "He ran these companies like the army. Travis was an alright guy. But in work, he was no one's friend, he was cutthroat. Even if his best friend was one minute late, he would fire them on the spot," said one ex-employee. Travis claimed he was an orphan, and his parents were killed when he was young. He had been in Southeast Asia for at least 12 years, the New Zealand Embassy confirmed. New Zealand authorities have been unable to locate any of his relatives in New Zealand. There is disagreement over his real age and identity. His passport, issued in Bangkok, says he was born in June 1961. Embassy officials say they have the birth certificate from New Zealand to prove it. But friends swear he was 53. One, John Angus, says he attended Travis' 45th birthday several years ago. And another, John Sheppard, says Travis registered at his fitness club with a birth date of 1948. There are rumours Travis' real name was Graham Church and that he was not a New Zealander. Just married to 23-year-old Varaporn Pangya (also the controlling shareholder in Travis' short-lived new venture Platinum), Travis had also been married previously in a ceremonial temple wedding to a Thai woman known only as Nut. After they broke up, he told everyone she had died of leukaemia, yet friends later saw her.
Decked with military tattoos, Travis claimed to have been a colonel in the Australian Special Armed Services (SAS), to have trained in the New Zealand SAS, to have fought in Vietnam, and been a mercenary in Sri Lanka, Burma and Cambodia. But the Australian and New Zealand armies, while not ruling it out the possibility without a search of their records, said they have never heard of him, or his alias. The Australian Embassy in Bangkok said he would have had to have been an Australian citizen to be in its armed forces. Yet, the New Zealand Embassy in Bangkok said they were satisfied Travis was the 40-year-old New Zealand citizen he claimed to be, and confirmed he legally married Varaporn in January this year. Bangkok-based Sheppard, a Briton, first met Travis in 1989, at Bangkok's Hilton Hotel fitness centre. "He wasn't well-off, he was scratching a living together by selling English-language courses," recalls Sheppard, who now runs several fitness centres in Thailand and Cambodia. Travis never drank or smoked and was a fitness fanatic. At the gym, Travis met a computer software businessman who offered him a marketing job. A "good talker", Travis made friends easily, says Sheppard. After tiring of the computer work, he went into the water-treatment business with another gym acquaintance, which was successful enough to give him a taste of the good life with a nice house and swimming pool.
But, in a telling sign, the partnership ended badly when Travis left to set up a rival company, poaching key staff. Friends said that sometime around 1992 Travis, who had a photographic memory for military history and sported a massive "Australian Armed Forces" tattoo across his back, went to Burma as a mercenary, training anti-government ethnic Karen fighters. One ex-friend, who knew Travis for 13 years, said he "disappeared" four times during that time on mercenary missions. In 1996 he set off for his last "job' in Sri Lanka to help the government forces fight the separatist Tamil Tigers.
Another member of Travis' wide, but constantly shifting, circle of acquaintances at the time was Michael Mescal, who he met, again, at a gym. An expatriate Briton, Mescal had apparently provided Travis with the link to Sri Lanka, friends said. Also known as "Omar", a name he adopted when he married a Sri Lankan Muslim (one of several wives) and converted to the Islam, Mescal dealt in gems in Sri Lanka. He was later arrested for conspiracy to smuggle hundreds of kilos of cocaine into Europe.
After he returned from Sri Lanka, Travis had enough money to take a few months off, living on the beach on Thailand's east coast with Nut. He worked out at the gym, played military games on his computer and raced around on his motorbike.
Later in 1997, he went to Cambodia and operated a bar in Phnom Penh called the DMZ for two years. The bar was popular with Australians and New Zealanders.
After he returned to Bangkok, he apparently broke up with Nut, resulting in a "strange" claim from Travis that she was dead. Contact with his old friends stopped, and they believe a "broken heart" might have been the catalyst for what followed. "It would have had an enormous impact on him" said friend Angus. "She was his life. Women to him were commodities, but not Nut."
It appears Travis, always a fast talker and quick to make new friends, then fell in with some bad company. "He got a taste for high living, the bullshit, the lifestyle," said another of his former friends.
Sometime after 1999 Travis became acquainted with the Mullers. At work, James Muller and Travis were a "good cop, bad cop" duo, with Travis playing the hard man. By all accounts, Travis and James Muller were close friends. Late last year they went on a trip to Europe together. They both lived the high life, spending their money on holidays in the Caribbean, where Muller had property and drove around in luxury cars.
People working in boiler room business said that late last year Travis started "shaving off" money, stealing millions of baht from his boss and friend. Then, in late January, just before police raided the offices of Global Options Co, he left the company taking with him client data, key staff, including Thai staff with senior contacts in the government, and possibly large sums of money. No charges were laid on the company, but police took boxes of documents from the office to examine. "When Ian left, he told the people that mattered to come with him," said a former company employee.
Police sources said Travis knew too much, and was trying to extort money from the Mullers. Unlike Travis, James Muller had plenty of experience with scamming, with links to fraudulent activities in other countries. People in Bangkok who know them said the Mullers came here with millions in their pockets from a string of schemes, and left with billions.
On March 1, the same day Travis was killed, the Economic Crime Division raided Global Options offices with warrants for the arrest of the Mullers for fraud. Later that day they were also being sought for masterminding a murder. But James Muller had already fled Thailand (on February 9) and Michael was nowhere to be found. They are now believed to be in the United States. Thai authorities are hoping to extradite them to face charges in Thailand. The alleged assassin, Surapatpong Ratchadarom, 28, was arrested within days of the shooting. He confessed to the killing, saying James Muller's wife had ordered it because Travis stole clients and data for his new firm, called Platinum.
One ex-boiler room employee said that Travis had been asking for trouble. "He was always the tough character, but he just wasn't scared when he should have been. He should have left [Thailand]. There was a lot of money at stake. He just sort of double-crossed him [Muller]. It was thieving from thieves. "He seemed to have an aura of invincibility." But it turns out that wasn't the case. With Travis' violent death and the fleeing of the Muller brothers, those on the periphery say it is the end for the Bangkok boiler-room scene. Friends of Travis before he fell in with the Mullers speak well of him, saying he was full of life, fun and energy. "He could be so witty, it was super to be around him, but he could also be sarcastic and tear you to shreds" said Angus.
"His epitaph should read 'he ran 200 metres with five bullets in him'." As for Travis' life, exactly what is fact and what is fiction is likely to remain a mystery. Said one of his long-time friends: "You'll never know. No one will ever tell you." Mary Longmore THE NATION
 
Last edited:
Sep 19, 2006
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www.chiangmai-xcentre.com
Interesting Story on the Guy shot down. I was living in Phuket at the time and there was a number of English involved in those Scams. Normally they were moving around between Bangkok, Pattaya and Phuket! I dislike Scammers and Bullshit Artists and there seem to be a lot of them around! Get rid of one another one pops up to take His place!
 

blackb15

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Ian
Very interesting the boiler room scams have a habit of ending badly when people get greedy ,they pick on the vulnerable so hard to have any sympathy. Like the old photos
Safe riding
Paul
 

DavidFL

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Staff member
Subscribed
Jan 16, 2003
14,455
5,287
113
70
Chiang Khong
www.thegtrider.com
April 1995. Chiang Mai - KL.
3 days.
Day 1 Chiang Mai - Hua Hin
Day 2 Hua Hin - Hatyai.
Day 3 Hatyai - KL

View attachment 28885

One of the few banners

View attachment 28886
"The Chiang Mai Motorcycle Touring Club" forerunner to GT Rider.
Good times & golden days indeed.

View attachment 28887
a good butch of characters too!

The guy on the right Ian Travis, murdered - shot down in broad daylight on Sukhumvit road not too long after.

Ian Travis 1995
1648904648856.png