A British expat has revealed how a spiralling legal dispute with a neighbour over a driveway led to him losing almost his entire retirement fund including homes worth £1.5million pounds – and culminated in him being thrown in a Thai jail.
Martin Savage, 65, looked forward to a dream retirement when he relocated to Thailand with his dual Thai/British citizen wife Sudarat, 66, but a boundary dispute with a neighbour saw legal fees eat up his credit.
And when Sudarat used his Thai property assets to underwrite his legal battle, he ended up in breach of Thai property law which saw him and Sudarat both sent to prison.
The retired engineer – whose successful career saw him work on major construction projects like the Channel Tunnel – has gone from a peak annual retirement income of £38,000 to struggling to live on just £100 a month from the tiny private pension which is his only surviving asset.
Speaking out to warn others of the dangers of retiring overseas, Mr Savage said last night: ‘I have lost everything, I’m completely broke.’
The couple met in November 1999 while Martin was on holiday in Phuket and married less than a year later. They initially settled in Northern Ireland where Sudarat ran two restaurants while he pursued his successful engineering career.
The story of their Thai retirement began almost 20 years ago when Martin sold up two lucrative investment rental properties near his home in Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland.
In 2007 they used the £500,000 proceeds from those sales to purchase a detached three-bed family home with 1.5 acres of land in Ubon Ratchathani to live in.
British expat Martin Savage (centre) and his wife Sudarat (right) had been looking forward to a luxurious retirement in Thailand – but it turned into a nightmare
The couple ploughed their savings into a luxurious £270,000 three-bed detached home in Ubon Ratchathani in the east of Thailand
They also purchased a 40-room apartment block in Pattaya – today worth around £1.2million – that the couple hoped would provide a lifelong steady income
They then bought a 40-room apartment block in Pattaya which they hoped would provide rental income for the rest of their lives.
For the first few years their dream appeared to be on track with the flats bringing in good money.
But in 2010 they became involved in a row with their next-door neighbour.
The boundary dispute seemed fairly innocuous at first – as they accused a neighbour of digging up their access road to try to force them to sell up and move out.
The couple hired a lawyer but with almost all of their cash tied up in properties Sudarat – who was the building’s sole legal owner due to Thai laws forbidding foreigners from owning land – borrowed £34,000 from a money lender.
But before they had a chance to repay the debt, the couple say he sold the building – today worth £1.2million – to an associate for around £45,000.
Martin told the Daily Mail: ‘She borrowed that money without my knowledge or approval. I would never have allowed it. She knows she made a mistake and there’s no value in going on about it now.
‘He was a predator, this was his business and he had done it plenty of times before.
‘My wife is a charming person but back then she was trusting and innocent and thought anybody who pretended to be her friend was.’
Martin maintains the transfer wasn’t legal as – even without his name on the deed – the apartment block was a shared marital asset protected under Thai law but he conceded: ‘In Thailand all you have to do is pay somebody in the office a bit of money and it happens.’
The couple didn’t immediately find out the flats had been stolen and carried on putting money into the legal dispute over the road.
Then in 2017 they were hit with a bombshell when they were both arrested for breach of contract and effectively squatting in their own building.
Martin added: ‘Legally they couldn’t do that, there was an ongoing court case and they had to wait for the court process to finish.
‘Five cops and an associate of the criminal came at 5pm on a Friday afternoon which is important because courts were closed for the weekend.
‘They told us to come to the police station to talk about the business, I asked whether we were under arrest but they said we weren’t and they just wanted to talk.
‘At the police station they were trying to get us to sign these forms written all in Thai, saying if you sign this you can go home but if you don’t you’re going to prison.
‘When we refused they locked us in the cells for Friday night, we were in the police station until Monday morning without a phone call and without being able to call the embassy.’
The forms – seen by the Daily Mail – are a report of their arrest stating he had been fully informed of the charges, offered a lawyer and told police he didn’t want to contact anybody – an account Martin claims is completely fabricated.
In the wake of falling prey to criminals, the couple now live in a small rented home costing £250 per month funded by his tiny private pension
A member of the same gang in Ubon was able to steal the couple’s £270,000 family home and three plots of land they also owned by claiming Martin and Sudarat had signed over power of attorney to him – leaving them homeless
Three days later Martin and Sudarat were sentenced to three months in Nong Plalai Prison where he was caged with 74 other men in a small cell from 4pm until 7am.
Martin said: ‘There was barely room to sleep on the concrete floor. At that time I was 57 years old. I have had asthma all my life and even though my stay in prison was short, when released from prison I was suffering from acute bronchitis.
‘If I had remained in prison longer without the knowledge of the Embassy it was a potentially fatal condition to someone of my age.’
However, within a few days the prison governor notified the British Embassy and eight days after arriving they were released.
By the time they returned to the apartment building their possessions had been cleared out and left dumped on the side of the road.
‘We took what we could and moved out, we’ve never been back since,’ said Martin.
But the couple were hit with a second blow when their family home – worth £270,000 – and three plots of neighbouring land were also sold out from under them.
It took five years to discover they no longer owned any property in Thailand and sale documents seen bythe Mail state Sudarat sold the house for £80,000 in 2014 but the same person had signed as both the buyer and seller – something that would be illegal in the UK.
That person had asserted they have power of attorney over the couple but the records office was unable to produce a signed legal document supporting that.
The couple tried to sue to recover the property but during a hearing in December 2023 the new owner didn’t turn up or present any evidence they had paid the money.
The judge still ruled against the couple, writing they had not proven he did anything dishonest so the court presumed his innocence.
In a chilling warning to Brits thinking of chasing a dream of building a new life abroad, Martin has shared how the paradise he had spent decades working for fell apart and claims he was the victim of racism and corruption.
He said: ‘We’re completely broke, we lost the properties and we have spent a lot of money on lawyers trying to fix this.
The couple have tried to persuade the British Embassy to demand answers from Thai authorities about the theft of their apartment block, but claim they have been met with hostility
‘We were forced out of our own home last year and we are staying in a rental, we have no money.
‘I have a small work pension of less than £100 per month and my wife is brokering property sales which brings in a small amount of money but it’s only commission based.
‘We’re barely scraping by, rent here is cheap and we’re paying £250 per month but this is a long way from the life we had planned.
‘By December of this year my wife and I will both be 66. We could give up, go back to the UK and live off the benefits system as pensioners, but that’s not who we are.’
Sudarat said: ‘My husband isn’t allowed to work in Thailand so all the responsibility falls on me. I hadn’t expected to be working full-time still at 66 which is hard.
‘I am so disappointed in our legal system, I used to have great faith but I have been so disappointed and let down by what happened to us.’
The couple have tried to persuade the British Embassy to demand answers from Thai authorities with two local MPs writing to the department about their imprisonment but claim they were told pursuing it would not be in the national interest.
‘This is a local property dispute between a Brit expat and some criminals,’ he said. ‘There is no British national interest here but they said it to shut me down. They don’t have to prove anything after that. That should be a warning to others.’
A Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office spokesperson said: ‘We supported a British man who was detained in Thailand and were in contact with the local authorities.’
