The Supreme Court will on Wednesday deliver a decision on an appeal against a fraud conviction by a former psychology student, who got a jail term for swindling a doctor out of more than 8 million baht.
The ruling on the appeal of Pemika Veerachatraksit, 34, will be read in the Criminal Court at 9.30am on Wednesday.
On Sept 25, 2013, the Court of Appeal upheld a four-and-a-half-year jail sentence on Pemika for deceiving Prakitpao Thomthitchong, owner of the renowned Applied Physics tutorial school, into giving her gifts and cash worth 8 million baht while he was suffering mental illness.
Pemika appealed the Appeal Court's decision and submitted a bail request with a 3.2-million-baht surety.
Pemika's case to be finalised Wednesday
The court did not grant her bail, saying she posed a flight risk. Pemika has since been detained at the Central Women Correctional Institution in Bang Khen.
The court said Pemika and three accomplices duped Dr Prakitpao into believing he and Pemika had been a couple in many past lives and he had abused her.
Pemika also managed to convince Dr Prakitpao that he had owed her money in the previous life and had to repay the debt. She told him she was a clairvoyant who could look back into past lives.
The swindle took place between October 2006 and February 2007. During that period, Dr Prakitpao, then 37, gave Pemika a Toyota Camry sedan worth 1.56 million baht, 980,000 baht in cash to buy the rare licence plate number Sor Hor-9999, a Rolex watch and other valuables worth more than eight million baht.
The doctor’s family claimed he began acting strangely and avoiding them after attending meditation sessions with a group of people including Pemika, who claimed to be his close female friend.
Medical tests revealed that Dr Prakitpao had elevated levels of pseudo-ephedrine, suggesting he might be drugged by the gang. Pseudo-ephedrine is a common ingredient in cold remedies and rarely produces adverse psychological effects. It was not the cause of his illness, experts said.
After noticing Dr Prakitpao’s mental disorder, the family sent him to Srithanya Hospital for mentally ill people. He returned to normality after a three-month treatment.
The Appeal Court upheld the Criminal Court's guilty ruling for the three accomplices, all university friends of Ms Pemika's. They were handed a three years' jail term, suspended for two years, and were fined 27,000 baht each.
The four defendants were also ordered to return assets worth 8.39 million baht to Dr Prakitpao, an increase from 8.03 million baht ordered by the lower court.