Police nab 3 Chinese nationals for kidnapping, extortion

Police arrested three Chinese nationals in Thailand for allegedly kidnapping and extorting about 3.2 million baht from a Chinese woman. Officers arrested two men and a woman at a hotel in the Aranyaprathet district of Sa Kaeo province.

A 23 year old Chinese woman studying for a bachelor’s degree filed a complaint with the Thong Lor police on Friday. In it, she claimed she had been abducted by a Chinese girl she had recently met with the help of two Chinese men.

Though their identities were not released, the three Chinese nationals were arrested this morning and are currently being held for further investigation at Thong Lor police station in Bangkok.

According to the victim’s story, she went to dinner in Ekamai with the Chinese girl on March 16. After dinner the woman brought her to a black Toyota Alphard parked nearby. Things changed suddenly when a knife-wielding man forced her into the vehicle where another man was waiting behind the wheel. The woman she had eaten with climbed into the van also and they drove off, Bangkok Post reported.

While in the van, she was threatened at knife-point and forced to transfer 250,000 yuan (about 1.24 million baht). They also made her use a crypto app to transfer the stablecoin Tether worth about 273,000 baht. Over the course of the night, one man made her get her boyfriend in China to send another 50,000 USDT (Tether), about 1.7 million baht.

The Chinese woman says she spent the night with her three captors in the van as they fleeced her and transferred her money to their account. By the end of the night, they had sucked about 3.2 million baht out of her various money sources and into their account.

The next morning, the two Chinese men dropped the victim and the female Chinese accomplice in the Min Buri area of Bangkok. The victim went home alone to her condo in Asoke.

She then filed a complaint with the Thong Lor Police, who then conducted an investigation. Police assumed that the two Chinese men and the Chinese woman were from the same gang and working together with the girl acting as bait to lead their victim to the men waiting to extort her.

The police traced her steps, starting at the restaurant in Ekamai, where they found CCTV footage of the two Chinese women getting into a Toyota Alphard. Further investigation revealed that the Toyota Alphard was rented for 6,00 baht a day from a car hire shop for use from March 15-17. It was returned to the shop on March 17.

Investigators were able to follow the footsteps of the three Chinese nationals to a hotel in Pattaya where they stayed briefly before leaving for Sa Kaeo province. It was there, at the Hitz Hotel in Aranyaprathet district, that police caught up with the suspects and arrested them