Thai man creates fake profile to swindle 4.3 million baht from doctor

The Police Cyber Taskforce (PCT) arrested a Thai man for creating a fake social media profile of himself as an attractive man to swindle 4.3 million baht from a female doctor.

The 60 year old doctor filed a romance scam complaint at Mae Ping Police Station in the northern province of Chaing Mai on October 27. The doctor said the scammer duped her by impersonating an attractive university student in desperate need of financial assistance, citing his inability to cover tuition and accommodation expenses.

The woman transferred money to the scammer 248 times, amounting to more than 4.3 million baht. After a month of conversations, the scammer man blocked her on all channels.

Officers discovered that the scammer was a 40 year old man named Worrapoj. He had studied psychology at one of Thailand’s leading universities and misused his knowledge for his fraudulent activities.

Officers arrested Worrapoj at his home in the central province of Ayutthaya yesterday, November 2. Worrapoj confessed to his crime and revealed that he was addicted to online gambling and had to find more and more money to pay off his gambling debts.

Worrapoj confessed to successfully defrauding more than 10 million baht from his victims and spent it all on gambling websites. Worrapoj faces two charges, including:

• Section 341 of the Criminal Law: Presenting false information by pretending to be another person to obtain the property of another person. The penalty is imprisonment for up to five years, a fine of up to 100,000 baht, or both.
• Section 14(1) of the Computer Act: Importing false information into computer systems and the information is likely to cause damage to the public. The penalty is imprisonment for up to five years and a fine of up to 100,000 baht.

In a recent report on romance scams, a Thai engineer fell victim to a romance scammer who posed as a university student. She made the same claims as Worrapoj, saying she needed money for her education, causing the man to lose more than 3 million baht to her.

Follow more of The Thaiger’s latest stories on our new Facebook page HERE.