A transgender woman has been arrested for duping mostly Japanese men out of more than 10 million baht over the past two months, according to the police.
Uthai Nanthakhan, 43, was apprehended by police outside a hotel in Soi Boonyu in Phaya Thai district of Bangkok on Sunday evening.
She was wanted on charges of fraud with an arrest warrant approved by the court, said Pol Lt Gen Surachate Hakparn, chief of the Immigration Bureau (IB).
Over the past two months, the bureau has received complaints from the Japanese embassy saying more than 10 Japanese nationals had been conned by a Thai transsexual, he said.
She was jailed for a similar crime in 2015 and was released last December. After her release, she allegedly repeated the crime, swindling more than 10 million baht from victims.
After her arrest, Ms Uthai allegedly confessed to the crime, claiming she was driven to seek revenge on Japanese men after a boyfriend from the country treated her badly.
Ms Uthai then frequented nightlife venues in the Thong Lor and Sukhumvit areas of Bangkok where she would lie to men she met saying she was a tourist from Hong Kong or Taiwan who had lost her purse.
She asked the foreign men if they would call a friend of hers for assistance. After the calls (to a bogus number) could not get through, she asked she could contact her family back home to wire money to her but, as she had no bank account, she would ask to use the victims' bank accounts to receive the money.
Ms Uthai told the victims the money from her family had been remitted but it would take a few days to appear in their bank accounts. In the meantime, she asked the victims to give her an advance, which she never paid back.