Pattaya: Local police are probing the death of a Kyrgyz woman believed to have leapt from a room on the seventh floor of a condominium on Thap Phraya Road on Friday.
Officers arrived about midday after being alerted to the discovery of the body, police said. Several Thai bank notes were found scattered near her body.
Police identified her as Anara Seitaleva, 30.
Although a preliminary investigation pointed to suicide as the cause of death, investigators have not ruled out foul play.
Police said they are now focusing on a complaint she filed with Pattaya police on Tuesday in which she said she was the victim of forced prostitution by a Chinese gang. Earlier, in Laos, she said she was also forced to work for a call centre gang.
A German man living in the room in which she stayed before her death told police she was a friend of his girlfriend.
She had asked for a place to stay after escaping from the gang which she said was looking for her, police said.
According to her statement given to the Pattaya police, Seitaleva was offered a job in Pattaya by a Chinese couple -- a man and a woman -- whom she met though a Kyrgyz friend.
Seitaleva was promised 20,000 baht a month for a vaguely-described tourism job, the statement said.
She arrived in Thailand on July 15 when she met another Chinese man who took her north to Chiang Rai after the pair stayed in a Bangkok hotel together for one night.
Upon arriving in Chiang Rai, she was taken to neighbouring Laos through the immigration checkpoint in Chiang Saen district.
In Laos, she was detained in a hotel with armed men guarding the door.
The Chinese man took her passport and forced her to work for a call centre gang, which she couldn't do, before forcing her into prostitution instead, said the statement.
She was filmed while having sex with her clients to blackmail her to continue.
On July 17, the Chinese man took her back to Thailand, flying her to Bangkok where she was forced to continue selling sex, it said.
The woman managed to escape from the gang on Sept 11 and took a taxi to Pattaya to ask for help from the German man.
Police found no sign of struggle in the room from where she was believed to have jumped, police said, adding antibiotics and antiviral and antiemetic medications, prescribed on Wednesday by Bang Lamung Hospital in the woman's name, were found at the scene.
Officers are working together with the Kyrgyz embassy in Bangkok to probe the alleged transborder forced prostitution ring and the gang behind it, said Pol Col Kulachart Kulachai, chief of Pattaya City police.