Thai woman nabbed over 6.2 billion baht ‘romance’ racket
A Thai woman has been arrested in connection with a “romance scam”, in which another woman was lured into transferring 6.2 billion baht of her employer’s money to accounts in several countries.
The 31-year-old suspect identified only as “Som” was tracked down to a construction workers’ camp in Chiang Rai’s Mae Chan district. Her case was in the hands of the Crime Suppression Division and Central Investigation Bureau.
The suspect claimed she had been hired by a Nigerian gang of scammers to open bank accounts at 10,000 each, police said.
In 2019, a woman identified only as “Chamanan” was lured into believing she was in love with an American doctor based in Afghanistan.
Police said the Nigeria-based scammer told her that he had got a huge inheritance and wanted to transfer the money to Thailand. He asked for Chamanan’s help while deceiving her into making several money transfers from her company’s bank accounts. As a chief financial officer of a Thai company, Chamanan had access to funds and ended up transferring more than 6.2 billion baht to different bank accounts in 17 countries.
Som is among 30 or so people wanted for high-profile scams. Arrest warrants have been issued for all of them on charges of transnational crime, money laundering, criminal rackets, embezzling, violating the Computer Crime Act, etc.
