Thai Abbot Sentenced to 50 Years Over $57M Gambling Addiction

Thailand’s Central Criminal Court for Corruption and Misconduct Cases sentenced former Wat Rai Khing abbot Yaem Inkrungkao to 50 years in prison on April 21 for embezzling more than two billion baht of temple donations and blowing it all on online Baccarat.

Yaem, known by his monastic title Phra Thamma Wachiranuwat, had served Wat Rai Khing since he was twelve. He spent 57 years at the Nakhon Pathom temple, rose to the rank of Abbot in 2008, and was appointed Governor of Ecclesiastical Region 14 in 2024. He also chaired a national Buddhist committee promoting the Five Precepts, the second of which prohibits stealing.

Investigators say the scheme ran for years. Yaem directed the temple committee to transfer donations from temple accounts into his personal bank accounts, then moved the money through a 28-year-old broker named Aranyawan Wangthapan, known in court documents as Sika Gen. Aranyawan acted as agent for LaGalaxy911, an offshore gambling site operating with none of the oversight that applies to regulated online casinos.

Losses Mounted as Investigation Deepened

Police financial tracking initially pegged the loss at 300 million baht, $9 million. As the investigation deepened, investigators traced more than two billion baht, about $57 million, flowing through 84 bank accounts linked to the operation. When temple funds ran low, Yaem borrowed further sums from senior monks at other temples to keep playing.

The case only broke because of an extraordinary undercover operation. Royal Thai Police Captain Nitithorn Prachankanchana infiltrated Wat Rai Khing as a live-in monk-attendant for 200 days, performing menial temple duties while quietly gathering evidence. The Crime Suppression Division ran the wider eight-month investigation, and Deputy Commissioner Jaroonkiat Pankaew announced the charges in May 2025 after the Abbot’s surrender and subsequent defrocking.

Aranyawan had been arrested in late 2024 during an earlier raid on the LaGalaxy911 network and released on bail. She was re-arrested in May 2025 at a Pattaya condominium after investigators traced a 100 million baht transfer from the temple’s account to her personal account. The other defendants, former monk Ekapot, Mor Toey, and Mor Toey’s husband Cha Chai, were charged alongside her. All five have announced plans to appeal.

The sheer scale of the loss pushed Thailand’s Supreme Patriarch to order transparency reforms across temple finances nationwide, and the case has become a touchstone in ongoing debates about how Thai Buddhist institutions handle public donations.