PATTAYA, Thailand — Thai authorities arrested U.S. resident Todd Arthur Williams on Sunday, charging the 47-year-old had rented a hotel room to produce adult movies. Thai criminal law prohibits pornographic operations.
According to a local Thai newspaper, Arthur admitted he’d hired local bargirls to perform in the adult films, and that he was operating as the cameraman, but said the producer and male star of the film had fled to Bangkok.
Police on the scene collected a laptop computer, four CDs showing bargirls engaged in sex, a pack of sexual enhancement pills and a digital camera. A number of sex toys and pornographic photos were confiscated as well at the Markland Hotel.
Thailand's Buddhist-majority culture is generally conservative about sexuality, a deep contrast to the notorious reputation the country has gained for prostitution, live sex shows and red-light districts.
The Thai government works to restrain the sex and pornography industries and employs a special section of its police force called the Computer Crime Suppression Center (the Center), consisting of computer experts who constantly seek out Thai pornography on the Internet and block access to it within the country In some cases, the unit tracks down and prosecutes adult content webmasters when they are located in Thailand.
British pornographer John Gilbert Bowen, aka John T. Bone was arrested and released after Thai prosecutors dropped the various pornography offenses he was charged with in April 2007. Bowen has directed hundreds of DVD lines for companies including Platinum Blue, Metro, Heatwave, Zane and others. He is best known for directing Annabel Chong in “The World’s Biggest Gang Bang.”
Thai government officials said they were tipped off to Williams’ alleged illegal activities by the Center which detected that certain foreigners in Pattaya were producing porn movies to sell online using Pattaya bargirls as a selling point.