BANGKOK — After tapping an unknown link sent to her phone, Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra briefly ceded full control of the Thai government to online scammers, sources confirmed Tuesday.
The incident reportedly occurred during a cabinet meeting while Deputy Minister of Labour Amphol Phongphanit was delivering a presentation on unemployment statistics. According to insiders, the Prime Minister was scrolling through her phone when a pop-up ad appeared offering her 15% off her next Pizza Hut order.
“Mr. Amphol is so boring. He’s always talking about Wave Rigidity or the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment or whatever—it’s tough to keep track of all those economic terms,” the PM reportedly said. “Obviously, I got bored and took my phone out, but I kept it under the table so no one could tell I wasn’t paying attention.”
Sources close to the PM said the online coupon caught her interest, as her last Pizza Hut bill had been unusually high. “Who doesn’t love to save money?” asked the Prime Minister, who owns 75 luxury watches worth over 160 million baht. “I have two little kids and they just eat non-stop,” added the woman who employs a full household staff and has never personally cooked a meal or washed a dish due to being born into extreme wealth.
“Unfortunately, that wasn’t an ad for Pizza Hut at all,” she later recounted, fiddling with a $13,000 bracelet she’s only worn twice because “the emeralds clash with the helicopter upholstery.” The link downloaded a trojan virus, instantly giving scammers complete access to executive government systems.
“It was more than I could’ve imagined,” said the scammer, a Sudanese national trafficked to Burma under the pretense of a customer service job but instead enslaved, and forced to run online scams for the 14K Triad, a well-known group of the Chinese mafia.
“Normally, we just drain their bank accounts and move on,” said a Triad spokesperson speaking on condition of anonymity. “Your average victim has about $300. But this time, we found ourselves in control of cabinet appointments, policy directives, treaty negotiations — the whole thing. It was hard to decide what to do first.”
As the PM attempted to close the fake coupon ad, the scammers dissolved parliament, vetoed pending royal decrees, deployed troops to seize the disputed zone along the Cambodian border, added another blue stripe to the Thai flag, issued mass pardons for Chinese nationals in Thai prisons, and emptied the government’s daily-use fund of more than 5 billion baht.
Asked by opposition MPs about the severity of her lapse, the Prime Minister said she was still considering legal action against Pizza Hut if they refused to honor the coupon next time she ordered in. Her lawyers confirmed that they plan to submit a screenshot of the coupon as evidence, if both sides are unable to reach a settlement.
At press time, the prime minister was thinking about buying a nice pair of shoes from a website she had never heard of before.
