The Criminal Court has sentenced a former chairman of Chulalongkorn University's savings cooperative to 200 years and 600 months in jail for swindling 100 people out of 183.7 million baht in a lottery quota investment scam.
Sawad Saengbangpla, 80, was taken from the Bangkok Remand Prison to the court on Ratchadaphisek Road to hear the ruling on Wednesday.
According to the prosecutors, between January 2016 and June 2017 Sawad invited people to invest in a savings cooperative, which he claimed would be used to purchase a quota from the Government Lottery Office for lottery ticket sales.
Sawad, a former computer engineering lecturer at the university and Thai cooperative savings expert, promised a monthly return of 1%.
He also falsely promised to return all the money, including the yield to investors in the final month of investment, prosecutors said.
Mr Sawad confessed to the public fraud charge during the trial. The court initially handed down a five-year sentence for each of Mr Sawad's 100 offences, but the sentence was later commuted to two and a half years per offence due to his confession.
Despite the centuries long jail term, Sawad will likely serve just 20 years in jail due to his age and the maximum prison term.
He was also ordered by the court to pay compensation ranging from 3 million baht to 39 million baht to each of the 100 victims, along with interest payments.
