A Gavel Falls in Paradise

This past summer we featured a long expose about White Sands Beach and the Royal Siam
Trust, a proposed beach-front development project in Trat, Thailand. The article chronicled an
extraordinary legal battle that pitted the investment firm of Meyer Japan and its Managing
Director, Richard Cayne; against the Royal Siam Trust Company whose Managing Partner is
Gregory J. Pitt. This article follows-up on that story.
Trat is one of Thailands 76 Provinces. It is bordered by Cambodia to the east and the Gulf of
Thailand to the South. Throughout a history that dates back to the early 17th century, Trat has
played an important role in the Thailands stability and economy due to its strategic location.
Chinese merchants flocked to Trat in its early history, and played an important role in its
development. The political and economic elite of Trat take pride in the regions history and
economic importance. And, as a result, are less than sympathetic to western financial
adventurers sullying the provinces reputation. But Trat has another reputation as well as a
sort of paradise on earth, with gorgeous pristine beaches in the south and the vaulted
Cardamom Mountains to the east. The type of place people dream of owning a piece of.
The courtroom in Trat is quiet with only the sounds of the various court officials working at
their respective tasks with bureaucratic efficiency. Lawyers representing Richard Cayne and
Gregory Pitt both Canadian nationals living and working in Thailand, sat shuffling through
papers, either busy or wanting to appear so. Cayne sat quietly, occasionally chatting with his
lawyer and looking at his watch. He appeared his usual self: confident but not excitable,
exhibiting the understated quiet that often seems to surround him.
Sitting somewhat apart from even his own attorney, Gregory Pitt looked nervous and slightly
disheveled. Some of the salesmans self-confidence that used to be his moniker has faded. Pitts
future is the real subject of the days courtroom drama. In simple terms, he stands accused by
Cayne of absconding with millions of dollars in real estate assets that are the property of
Caynes investors. It is a peculiarity of Thai law that an individual like Cayne can bring criminal
charges against another individual, like Pitt, and if he prevails in the matter, the defendant can
find themselves facing a prison term in the very disagreeable confines of a Thai prison. Pitt has
good reason to be nervous.
It had been a long, winding and totally implausible road since 2004, when Cayne and his firm,
Meyer Japan, first became aware of what was a seemingly excellent investment opportunity
with Pitt and White Sands Beach. Thailands real estate market was booming and Japanese
nationals were looking for real estate investment opportunities abroad. Cayne had developed a
well-known reputation for his ability to search-out higher-yielding investment opportunities for

his clients when he met Pitt, who was the driving force between the Royal Siam Trust with
investments in various financial opportunities including White Sands Beach. Initially the
relationship was a typical one between Meyer and the Royal Siam Trust. Nothing noteworthy
other than the usual grind of facilitating investment documents and sales of investment
interests.
But in 2010 Cayne started to hear stories that things were amiss with White Sands Beach.
Cayne received word from multiple, independent source, that Pitt had illegally transferred
control of investors interests from their names to Pitts control. It was an action akin to
changing title on a home without the owners consent.
Initially, Cayne found such a brazen act to be hard to believe. When he finally learned the true
dimensions of the fraud, he tried to convince Pitt to return the investors equity to their rightful
owners. Pitts response was like something out of a modern-day courtroom drama: He not only
wouldnt return the investors rightful positions, he made it clear that if Cayne didnt back-off
and he would accuse Cayne of complicity in the fraud and bring down Meyer Japan. Cayne, so
Pitts thinking went, would never, ever risk that. After all, billions of dollars in losses, not the
millions in losses at White Sands Beach, had just been lost in the U.S. banking fiasco and no one
had owned-up to anything and certainly no one had gone to jail. Surely, Pitt reasoned, Cayne
would do the same: Take his lumps and walk away. He was wrong. And the magnitude of his
error had leaded him to this hour in a Trat, Thailand courtroom.
Not only had Richard Cayne refused to go quietly into that good night and let Pitt walk away
with millions of dollars of his investors assets, he had taken on the considerable burden of all
of the legal expenses for bringing Pitt before the Court. Cayne had made good on a pledge to
front the legal fees for any claimant who wanted to fight and be represented in the
proceedings. But money wasnt the only thing that Richard Cayne was to spend during the four
years of litigation. He was to pay dearly with his reputation.
Beginning several years before that day in the Trat courtroom, Pitt had made good on his threat
to sully Caynes reputation. He had indeed sought to claim against all evidence to the contrary
that Cayne, not he, was complicit in the fraud. Pitt had a promoters understanding that
despite mounds of bank records, legal documents, money trails and testimony that he was the
perpetrator of a fraud where scores of peoples names were wiped away from their land
holdings; he, Gregory Pitt, still had a wild card to play. Its the same card that so many others
have found useful in modern information wars: the ability to make any claim you want on the
Internet.
Gregory J. Pitt is many things: salesman, promoter, founder of his own ready made law firm
without lawyers, and lover of the good life. But he was not two things: a lawyer or technically

savvy. But as with so many other things, he understood these talents were a mere commodity
to be bought on the cheap. He soon found that cheap commodity in two additional players in
the White Sands Beach drama both of whom are, or shortly may be, facing their own legal
hurdles.
Daniel Edward Giroux, aka Daniel Edward Kennedy, aka Michael Gage is an American national
who teaches English in Japan where he lives with his wife and young family. Kennedy, the name
he appears to prefer more often than not, was a long-time of associate of Greg Pitts who had
made himself known to Cayne and expressed a willingness to work with Cayne in the fight for
the investors. Cayne sensed that perhaps Kennedy might actually be able to be of help and
worked out an agreement with Kennedy for his assistance. After all, Cayne thought, Pitt and
Kennedy had a history together and Kennedy knew a lot. He was about to find out how wrong
he was.
After initially signing an agreement to work with Cayne to help investors recoup their
investments, Kennedy saw there was more pay-dirt helping the increasingly desperate Pitt than
with the more business like Cayne. So Kennedy jumped ship and headed to Pitts camp for an
unknown amount that was nevertheless boasted by Kennedy as an a shitload of money.
In Kennedy, Pitt had hired a hyper-aggressive Pit Bull with an exaggerated sense of intrigue and
less than stellar judgment about when and where to take a plunge. Kennedy would be Pitts hit
man on the web. Like Pitt, Kennedy and Pitt enjoyed roaming through the seedier night life of
Bangkoks Soi Cowboy and Nana Districts while working through their plan to shift the fingerpointing to Cayne something they regularly did together in the earlier stages of their effort to
destroy Caynes reputation before he could gain traction in court.
Kennedy then enlisted James De Carlo, a Canadian national from Ottawa who, like Kennedy,
taught English in Japan. De Carlo and Kennedy would be Pitts hit men on the web, each alleging
and causing to be alleged on blog posts, in articles and on social media that the real perpetrator
of the White Sands Beach fraud was Cayne, not Pitt. They offered no facts, no documentation,
nothing. But they had a cunning realization that it didnt matter. There plan, soon put into
motion was to perpetrate the informational equivalent of a drive by shooting where few
people would be interested in any more than the accusation. Facts are damned and they
knew it.
But like their new boss Pitt, Kennedy mistook Caynes determination and resolve. Having
broken the agreement where Kennedy agreed to work to help bring Pitt to justice, Kennedy had
triggered a liquidated damages clause in the agreement with Cayne. Damages that could total
$250,000.00, and are now the subject of Kennedys own legal morass that will in all likelihood
come to a head in the coming weeks when Kennedy will learn his own fate in a Japanese court.

DeCarlo, who investigators have linked to Kennedy and Pitt and has worked with the two
helping thwart the investors fight to recoup their money, has significant blame in the White
Sands Beach affair. After Kennedys and Pitts legal cases are concluded, it is likely that DeCarlo
will be the next to see the inside of a courtroom.
The din of clerical noise comes to a halt as the Judge enters the courtroom. All rise except the
subject of todays courtroom drama. Pitt, now in a wheelchair for unspecified reasons, remains
seated, looking tentatively around the courtroom. The Judge listens to final motions and
pronouncements by attorneys for Pitt and Cayne and then announces he will issue his opinion
in due order, making clear he has come to a conclusion.
When the verdict is made public it is a devastating one for the man who wanted more than
anything to emulate his hero: Donald J. Trump: The court rendered a verdict of three years
imprisonment on each of two charges of systematic criminal violations of the Thai Partnerships,
Companies, Associations and Foundations Act.
Then, in the first week of December, another hammer blow: An additional verdict of three
years on each of four additional counts, bringing Pitts total sentence to 18 years in a Thai
prison.
The differences between U.S. and most European nations laws can be striking. Another
anomaly of Thai law is this: If Pitt agrees to return assignment of the land to its rightful owners,
and Cayne is willing to drop the charges, the court can be petitioned to withdraw the sentence.
In theory, by making good, Pitt could potentially avoid a lengthy prison sentence in Thailand.
Whats a mystery to everyone, even those close to Pitt, is why he stretched the envelope so far
for so long. Why he didnt back down earlier in the brutal battle when it became clear that he
was in serious jeopardy of losing his liberty and going to prison. One of the claimants who lost
his investment and who benefitted from Caynes determination had perhaps the best answer:
When Greg came to Thailand he was going to get rich. And he got rich. Once he all of that
wealth in his hands, he just couldnt give it up and go back to being the old Greg Pitt.
The Donald would surely would have settled and kept the game rolling.
Posted By - Elliott Rosenthal
Source: - http://whitesandsbeach.info/a-gavel-falls-in-paradise/