I am not an expert, but you will need it translating first and then notarised at the Department of Consular affairs.
If you go there are people that will do the translation in an hour or 2, but phone and book an appointment for the afternoon at the Consulate so that you can do it all on the same day.
I think you are answering someone else's post, I didn't say it was a sound financial investment.
Everybody could probably do illegal things to earn money. I prefer to stay within the rules and in the scheme of things 800,000 is not a lot to lose a bit of interest on, but each to their own.
yes the bank account is definitely the difficult part. Once you have that everything else is straightforward. I went to several banks before finally getting Bangkok bank to open my account.
I think you are absolutely correct, but the process is fairly easy once you have opened a bank account here, it's just a case of providing the documents that are required and filling in a simple form.
I am not saying I use an agent to book flights (I don't), but it's not that much more expensive and some people are nervous booking flights (which is your point).
Using an agent for a visa is expensive and unnecessary, unless you want to break Thailand's rules IMO.