A senior Microsoft executive has been accused of remotely accessing secretly recorded footage of a young family renting their Thai home.
Microsoft ANZ chief of staff Chong Kim and his wife Matsee Songchai of Sydney reportedly downloaded more than 300,000 still images and videos from cameras they had set up at Ben Millson and his family’s rental home.
The Millsons discovered last year that the optical surveillance devices were sending images of them at their Chang Mai property back to the Sydney technical director’s home.
An image captured from Ben Millson’s home. He rented the premises from Microsoft boss Chong Kim
Microsoft ANZ Chief of Staff Chong Kim and his wife Matsee Songchai are accused of remotely accessing video and images from their rental home
Ben Millson and his family were filmed renting a property from Microsoft chief Chong Kim
The secret recordings were discovered after the Millsons made routine inquiries to the couple about the rental property during their two-and-a-half year stay.
In a report prepared by Melbourne lawyer Lachlan Watts to the Australian Federal Police, he alleged that the pair had used a ‘coach service’ to threaten the Millsons – an offense in Australia which, if proven, carries a five-year prison sentence.
“Late last year, Mr. Millson discovered that cameras in the home were connected to a digital video recorder and that images and videos were stored on a hard drive connected to the internet and accessed remotely by Chong & Songchai,” the allegations read.
“The hard drive was disconnected and handed over to Orion Investigations in Bangkok. Orion’s forensics revealed 389,527 still images and video, including images of Mr. Millson’s children.”
Daily Mail Australia has obtained a copy of that forensic report, which includes footage of the Millsons captured by five cameras inside the property and around the pool.
The couple were contacted by Daily Mail Australia this week but have declined to comment on the allegations.
But it is clear that they are vehemently denying access to the cameras, despite the independent forensic evidence gathered by the Millsons.
Microsoft, which was also made aware of the allegations in a document by Mr Watts, also did not respond to questions from Daily Mail Australia.
Ben Millson discovered that CCTV cameras set up around his rental property were being used in Australia by his landlords
Ben Millson is a kickboxer and corporate high flyer
Microsoft’s Code of Conduct for Senior Employees emphasizes that a person’s “character and leadership really matter to Microsoft.”
Microsoft states that Regional Directors should not engage in disrespectful behavior. This includes harassment, stalking, abuse and any other behavior that Microsoft deems inconsistent with Microsoft culture and standards,” Mr. Watts reminded the company in October.
Mr Millson – himself a senior executive at a global company – told Daily Mail Australia that both Australian and Thai police refused to act on his concerns.
“The Australian police weren’t really interested,” he said. “They just kept ignoring me and in the end they couldn’t care less.”
Instead, Mr. Millson was charged by Thai police with ‘stealing’ the couple’s hard drive, which he had secretly connected to the internet in a closet upstairs.
Although the case was dropped by a Thai judge last year, the Australian couple appealed the decision, meaning Mr Millson is stuck in Thailand to challenge the charges.
“We didn’t have any luck with this in Thailand. We did our best,” said Mr. Millson.
“People are filming from overseas, from Australia, in a place that I think they wouldn’t take lightly. Two foreigners come over and abuse the system and I’m being charged.”
Just days before leaving the property, the Millsons saw more cameras set up.
‘Along the walls, in the trees around the yard, on the posts around the yard, everything. (Ms. Songchai) thinks we’re going to steal her furniture, which we asked her to get rid of before we moved in,” Mr. Millson said.
The Millsons had moved to the property from Singapore based on photographs of the Thai property, unaware that there were cameras everywhere.
“We immediately raised it with the officer and said we weren’t happy because they could be watching us. We were told they were just there for safety, they don’t look at them and so on,’ Mr Millson said.
But within months Mr Millson discovered that they were indeed being watched, while a gardener employed by the Australian couple would be ordered to enter the premises and remove a statue the Millsons had placed in the house.
‘I went hunting for this device, I know what a network connection looks like. It took me ages to find it and I finally found it in a very, very tall cupboard on top of another cupboard hidden in the laundry room,” he said.
Mr. Millson said he disconnected the hard drive from the router, which was later secretly reconnected while they were gone.
A sign that residents claim Microsoft ANZ Chief of Staff Chong Kim and his wife Matsee Songchai set up after their building plans were thwarted
Signs around the estate in Thailand once lived in by Ben Millson
“They sent someone back into the house, who must be working for a CCTV company, and reconnected everything and they’re not telling us,” he said.
When Mr. Millson found the hard drive plugged back in, he took the entire unit and hid it until his family moved out about a month later.
On his departure, Mr Millson said he told the pair he was taking the hard drive because of its contents.
Months later, he was charged with “criminal misappropriation” of the hard drive, which eventually landed him blacklisted by the Thai immigration service.
Mr Millson said he later paid the pair for the hard drive but they went ahead with the charge.
The case went to a two-day trial in November, with Mr Millson and his wife both required to testify.
In February, the judge dismissed the case and filed an appeal that continues to this day.