Rawai villagers caught up in romance scams
by Jessada Chantharak. PHOTOS: The Nation
Five impoverished residents from Rawai in Phuket’s south, say they have been tricked into opening bank accounts that were used in romance scams.
Facing arrest warrants over the scams, the five villagers have filed an appeal with the Royal Thai Police’s Taskforce for Information Technology Crime Suppression for help.
The five residents claim they opened bank accounts to help a fellow villager who said he needed a bank account to collect wages. They say the villager needed to keep the bank account books and gave each a 1,000 baht reward for their help.
The five say they did not think of it again until last week when they were told to attend Bangkok’s Phayathai Police Station in relation to fraud charge.
The five villagers had to accept donations from the local community to fund their travel to Bangkok.
Chief investigator Pol Colonel Chusak Khanatnit collected their petition for help and said he would investigate to ensure justice for them, although the romance scam cases would continue.
Chusak said that the person who lured the five villagers into opening the bank accounts had already been arrested and initially admitted to having been hired to find other Thais to open bank accounts so that the bank account books could be sold to customers.
The romance scams would usually involve criminals using bogus white male identities to persuade women to wire money to pay an import tariff fee for the delivery of non-existent overseas “gifts”.
SOURCE: The Nation
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