KHON KAEN — Police have levelled fraud charges against the operators behind a multi-level marketing scheme selling radioactive cards which claim to heal diseases.

On Thursday, Khon Kaen deputy governor Santi Laoboonsa-ngeam said that provincial police have charged the individuals responsible for the Expert Pro Network company’s selling of potentially dangerous “Energy Cards”.

“As of now we cannot reveal the identities of the perpetrators since the investigation into witnesses is a process being kept tightly under wraps. We want to file charges against everyone who was involved,” Santi said.

Since mid-June, mostly elderly residents in Ubolratana, Khao Suan Kwang, Nam Phong, and Khon Kaen City districts have been tricked into paying up to 1,500 baht for a plastic card that claims to heal body parts if stuck onto the body or dipped into drinking water.

Read: The ‘Energy Card’ MLM Scamming Isaan Elderly

Expert Pro Network, owned by Thanat Surin, recruited distributors to buy and then resell cards.

When the scandal broke, Thanat went on TV to claim that the cards help people “relax muscles through negative ions.” However, chemistry professor Weerachai Phutdhawong later rebuked the claim and found that the cards are radioactive.

At the Office of Atoms for Peace government research facility on Monday, Weerachai said that the cards contain uranium and thorium. At a 1 centimeter distance from the card, the card releases 40 microsieverts per hour, almost half as much as an x-ray (0.1 millisieverts).

Sieverts measure how much radiation a body can take. A human body can take around 1 millisievert per year, or 1,000 microsieverts.

Carrying the card around for three hours will give a person more than the amount of radiation received from an x-ray. Carrying the card around for longer will multiply the amount of radiation received.

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MLM ‘Energy Cards’ Radioactive: Professor

The ‘Energy Card’ MLM Scamming Isaan Elderly