Go to the Thai embassy website in Washington DC and review their requirements. You either need a certain amount of funds or must demonstrate monthly income..
could be illegal if he doesn’t have the 800k to put in the account for the required time and was going to use an agent to circumvent that…..don’t know if he was or not.
only a problem if you get caught. Evaluate where you think you want to live and what the costs are. I’m sure there are places you could live a basic simple life.