Police will seek arrest warrants for "copyright agents" who ordered krathong floats with copyrighted cartoon characters from a 15-year-old girl, and then had her arrested and fined for copyright infringement.

Police were expanding their investigation after more than 40 vendors filed complaints against the same agents, alleging they also sought police action against them in a copyright "sting operation" to extort fines.

Police have not named the copyright agents.

The scam was exposed after a Nakhon Ratchasima teenager, identified only as “Orn”,  was arrested on Nov 1 for making krathongs featuring San-X cartoon characters and forced to pay a 5,000-baht fine for copyright infringement, sparking public anger.

Orn, who was making and selling floats for the Loy Krathong Festival to help pay for her education, said she received an online order for 136 floats, with the customer demanding she use cartoon characters even though she had never used them before.

When she delivered 30 of the floats to the customer at a local department store on Nov 1, she was arrested by police, who told her the order was placed by a copyright agent.

At first, the “agent” demanded she pay a 50,000 baht fine, but Orn’s grandfather negotiated it down to 5,000 baht.

TAC Consumer Plc, the representative of Japanese copyright holder San-X cartoon, denied it had assigned anyone to work with police in copyright sting operations.