Victims of alleged Facebook gold-bar scam demand police action
Some 100 people on Friday filed police complaints claiming that they had lost Bt200 million in a gold-bar trade scam operated by individuals whom they contacted via a Facebook page.
The group, led by Suwachat Kiattikul, met with police spokesman Pol General Weerachai Songmetta at the Royal Thai Police head office in Bangkok to demand justice. Suwachat said he and other people had bought gold bars via a Facebook page at the cheaper-than-market price of Bt18,000-Bt19,000 per one baht weight of gold (around 15.24 grams) before realising that it was a scam.
Weerachai said police would co-ordinate with the Economic Crime Suppression Division to join initial interviews of those who had suffered damages, expected to complete by the end of Friday. Police are still investigating who and how many people were involved in the alleged scam.
If police officers later found it was a case of public fraud, they would contact the Anti-Money Laundering Office to launch a probe of the money transactions and to seize the alleged wrongdoers’ assets in a bid to retrieve money for the victims, Weerachai said.