I know quite a few people that have overstayed on their visas in multiple countries. I accidentally overstayed on my own visa but it was for a single day and it only happened because of the fact that my flight was a red-eye flight in the middle of the night and I failed to take into account that 1:00 AM is actually the next day. It's a dumb mistake and I wasn't in trouble for it. Immigration was cool about it but they still charged me 500 THB for what I had done.
One person I know overstayed his visa by a bit over a year and that was the longest I had ever heard of anyone overstaying until recently.
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I don't think the guy was really hunted all that much because Immigration doesn't really bother with such things unless you have committed some other crime. Apparently this guy did nothing criminal in his time here and according to police reports, they were aware that he hadn't exited Thailand by an official entry/exit point. They just didn't know exactly where he was.
While his identity is being kept a secret, including blurring out his face for the official press releases (well done Thailand! I'm genuinely impressed) we know that he is a British citizen and he entered the Kingdom of Thailand in the year 2000 on a 30-day visa and well, I guess he just decided that he liked it a great deal. haha
I can relate to him being so enamored by this country because I have had my life plans change multiple times because of the love I have for Thailand. The difference is that I always sought out new ways to be able to stay legally. I never contemplated just going completely off-grid for long stretches of time.
I can understand why my friend overstayed for the year that he did. You see, there is a limit on how much you can be charged for overstaying and that amount is 20,000 THB or around $600. At the rate of the current fine of 500 THB per day, you reach the maximum possible penalty in just below a month and a half of overstay. So, by my friend's logic, once he had surpassed that 40 days of overstay, there was no financial incentive for him to come clean.
Apparently a lot of people behaved this way in relation to visas in Thailand and a few years back the country adopted a "blacklist" program that if you overstay your visa for more than 90 days, you will not be allowed to re-enter the country for a certain number of years. In the case of my friend he had no intention of ever coming back to Thailand but about 3 years later there he was, back in Thailand and when I asked him how he pulled it off he said that he just went and got a new passport. I can only hope that the Thai blacklisting process is a bit more sophisticated than this now. His first name was Bill and his last name, which I won't post, was something so common in the west that there are likely tens of thousands of people with the same name. So maybe my buddy "Billy" just got lucky.
For this gentleman though, the government is taking it kind of seriously and are adapting a program of potentially banning him from EVER returning to Thailand ever again. I don't suppose it matters all that much since the person in question is reported to be nearly 70 years old so if they did ban him for 10 years what are the chances of him being physically capable of coming back anyway?
This story is the talk of the town where I live because apparently the guy was apprehended multiple times by authorities but he managed to talk his way out of it because he is fluent in Thai and also very charismatic. He told authorities that he didn't have his passport because he had applied for a new British passport and it would be arriving in the post in (insert amount of made up days.) They took him at his word and he simply moved to a new address multiple times. The name he provided was always false but he was so charming and cooperative seeming that they never bothered to apprehend him or even so much as photograph him.
He is big news in Chiang Mai because he was apprehended here in Chiang Mai. I guess it is easier to blend in here because we have a relatively huge expat population and landlords of rented buildings while required to report the foreign residents, can normally be convinced to skip this step for a little bit of money under the table.
The people that were renting to him likely need to be even more concerned about the consequences of this apprehension than the man himself need be, because the Police don't take it very lightly when they are back stabbed by their own people.
Visas in Thailand are a pain in the backside, that is for sure. But you are really playing with fire if you just decide to ignore the visa policies of this or any other country.