📰 From the news · Impersonating a real college/agent
Ten years at one clinic, twenty at another: Bangkok's false doctors, the licences they did not have, and the real doctors' names on their prescriptions
Thailand has an established medical profession, a licensing council and a market in private clinics large enough for impostors to hide in for decades. The Bangkok Post's reporting over 2024 and 2025 describes three.
According to the Post, a man who had posed as a doctor for ten years and his assistant were arrested in November 2025 at a clinic in the Min Buri district, where they were said to have diagnosed illnesses, prescribed medicines and issued medical certificates. The man could produce only a licence in traditional Thai medicine, not a physician's licence, and had been writing prescriptions under the names of two real doctors who were not present at the clinic. In an earlier case, the Post reported the arrest of a 74-year-old man working as "Dr Manid" in the Lat Phrao area on forged identity cards and medical licences; he had been arrested for the same offence in 2017, when he used forged documents to work in a company infirmary in Rayong. And in 2024 the paper reported a 55-year-old former navy officer arrested on charges of practising medicine for twenty years without a licence, after a complaint about fake doctors offering abortion services at clinics on Phetchaburi Road; he admitted practising without a licence since 2004. Those charged are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
The detail that connects the cases is the borrowed licence. A clinic can be registered under a real doctor's name, prescriptions can carry a real doctor's number, and a patient who checks the name on the sign against the council's register will find a licensed physician. The person in the consulting room is somebody else.
That is the same trick as the "registered agent" and the "licensed college" in admission frauds: a genuine registration, displayed by someone it does not cover. Check the person, not the sign. Thailand's Medical Council publishes its register; so does every regulator whose country appears on this site. Ask to see the licence of the person treating you or advising you, and compare the face to the name.
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This is a news-sourced case summary written by the TrustMBBS team, not a first-person account; see the sources above. They reflect one person's experience and are not a verdict on any institution. Report your own: Report a scam or tell your story.