Free Matthew

My name is Joshua Wilson, and my brother Matthew Wilson has been living in Thailand for the past 2 years. He originally moved there to help a friend manage a security company, but this opportunity died with the rise of Covid. He was forced to work freelance security and private investigations to support himself. His new work included investigating multiple medical examination PPE glove fraud rings preying on American businesses during the pandemic by shipping used, soiled, sometimes bloody gloves and representing them as new, for use in the American medical system. During the course of his investigation, an altercation took place when a glove scammer realized that a contract signing meeting they had organized was a fake buy being conducted for the purposes of trying to gather more evidence to dismantle the fraud ring he was involved in. I can only give limited details because of an ongoing criminal case against him and several others, but no one was severely harmed in the course of the altercation.

My brother spent 40 days in a Thai prison while my family worked to secure bail for him. Matthew lost 40 pounds in prison due to the lack of proper meals, and he had to sell his shoes and went barefoot to pay for food while in jail. You can imagine how hard it was for us to help Matt find a lawyer and get him out on bail, as we are in the USA, and he is over nine thousand miles away in Thailand. Thankfully Matthew’s fiance (pictured in the photo) was able to work with us to get him out of jail. Since he’s been out on bail, the criminal case brought against Matthew by the scammers has unfortunately been allowed to continue. My brother has received death threats, and has been the subject of many attempts of physical intimidation, as well as being asked to pay bribes to the scammers in order for them to drop the case. Throughout all of this, Matthew still has to pay for rent, food, transportation, and other normal costs of living. Making matters worse, he is currently not allowed to legally work in Thailand due to the ongoing court case.

The upside to all of this is that my brother's arrest, and the high-profile arrest of others in his case, led to the Department of Homeland Security and CNN giving this issue the attention it deserves. Since getting out of prison, my brother has had the privilege of assisting DHS with their investigation into these glove scams. The scale of these scams are MASSIVE with a possible $450 million dollars being stolen from American companies. It has become big news in Thailand and internationally. Here are some links for context. The investigations Matthew and his associates performed have contributed much of the information in these articles, and to the widening investigations which are leading to arrests for several of these criminal groups:

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/24/health/medical-gloves-us-thailand-investigation-cmd-intl/index.html)

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/03/asia/thailand-police-skymed-gloves-intl/index.html

So far, our family has had to pay tens of thousands of dollars for attorney fees and bail for Matthew, which has basically bankrupted our family. My father has had to draw large amounts of savings from his retirement funds, and my other brother has sold his car to help. I’m therefore required to explore whatever other options I can in order to continue the fight. We have been suffering through this for about 6 months and creating a GoFundMe was a last resort for us, but it is necessary so that we can continue fighting against these criminals. My family and myself humbly request your support. If you are able to spare any kind of contribution, we would be extremely grateful. We thank you dearly for your support.