The British YouTuber at the centre of an apparent extortion attempt is confident that an email demanding money was just an idle threat and did not come from a French man who helps the Thai police.
Daniel McKee, from Middlesbrough in England – known on his YouTube channel as “Danny Mac” told his local audience in Thai in a Facebook video that the Thai police had spoken to him to suggest that the email demanding 200,000 baht had come from someone trying to discredit Thierry Perenon.
This was the name on the email. He has connections with the Thai police but is not a sworn officer.
Danny had earlier been at the centre of a dispute with a Bangkok taxi driver who had been reluctant to return change and called him mean.
After a video made in Thai by Danny that went viral he received the email telling him to transfer money to the bank account of a Thai national. It was claimed that he had ruined the life of the taxi driver and must pay for that.
Police contacted the Thai named as having the bank account and he was found to have closed the account many months before. Thus Danny would have been unable to send the money even if he had gone through with the extortion attempt.
Subsequently Danny has spoken to the man called Thierry Perenon and is happy that he was not involved though it has not been fully explained how his email came to be used.
It is also not known who made the threats even though they now appear to be hollow demands.
Danny thanked the Pattaya police, the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) and the Thai people for their support.
In the video he said that claims that he was working illegally in Thailand were groundless – he said that he has a work permit.