by his account of events he tried to explain his lack of an onward ticket by saying that he intended to extend his stay once in-country. In other words he wasn't planning to leave and he had lied about the purpose of his trip being tourism. Sure, a lot of people do that and you never hear of if causing a problem, but it's surprises me that he would given a second chance after admitting that to an immigration officer.
either way he was given every opportunity to fix the problem, even after trying to get away with a fake ticket and explaining that he was planning to work from Thailand as software developer and not to leave after 60 days.
Even if it's true the guy wasn't treated unfairly. He says that he lied on his arrival form about having an onward ticket, that the immigration officer wanted to see the ticket and then let him try to fix the problem by buying a ticket out of Thailand online, then instead of doing that he reserved a ticket online but didnt pay for it, the immigration officer noticed that it wasn't a real ticket and still gave him another chance to buy a real ticket.
Discuss it with the company's HR department. I went back and forth between having a non-Imm B and a non-Imm OA when I was consulting for a Silicon Valley company that was outsourcing some of their manufacturing to Thailand. If your company has a good HR department and you have some value to that company, things like that can generally be worked out.
If there’s a multinational company that wants to hire you and they have a good HR department in Thailand they could probably get you the correct visa and work permit; if you’re trying to find a job with a Thai company with whom you have no prior relationship, then probably it’s a pipe dream.
structuring incoming transfers so that they are small enough to not be reported to anyone has the potential downside of making it harder to transfer your money out of Thailand if you ever need to do so. Generally you can only transfer out as much money as you transferred in.
maybe it has changed since I first got my retirement visa but when I applied what was required was a police report from either your current country of residence or from the country of your citizenship. A Thai police report wasn't required.