A man has been arrested for duping a woman in a romance scam — posing as a Vietnamese military physician attached to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato).
The man, identified only as Narathip, 31, a native of Uttaradit, was detained at a house in Bang Kapi district of Bangkok.
He was charged with fraud in running a romance scam in which he contacted a woman via Instagram but never met in person. He pretended to be a military physician from Vietnam working under Nato on an overseas posting.
According to the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB), the suspect had courted the woman online, and she fell in love with him. He talked her into wiring money to pay for his move to Thailand.
The woman made several money transfers amounting to 60,000 baht to Narathip.
On June 23, the CCIB discovered the remittances were recorded in a bank account often used by romance scammers. They immediately alerted the woman, who then filed a police complaint.
CCIB commissioner Pol Lt Gen Worawat Watnakhonbancha ordered investigators to compile the evidence and request a warrant for Mr Narathip's arrest.
Once the warrant was out, police apprehended the suspect on charges of colluding to defraud a person and putting false information into a computer system.
In a similar case, a woman civil servant found herself on the verge of being declared bankrupt after she was deceived by a fraudster in the guise of a stock trader, and had a relationship with him.
The 35-year-old woman, accompanied by a team of Sai Mai Tong Rod (Sai Mai District Must Survive) emergency response workers, lodged a complaint with deputy national police Surachate Hakpan on Tuesday.
The woman told police she met the man through a dating app in April. He claimed he made a living as a stock trader.
The man finally met the woman. He again posed as a successful stock trader, claiming two bachelor's degrees in finance and large overseas bank accounts.
After three months of going steady, he advised her to buy two cars as investments, which she agreed to. She also obtained bank loans worth five million baht for him and bought him gold jewellery.
The man then took off with the cars, money from loans, and valuables. The woman said she later discovered the cars were sold to a dealer in Pathum Thani.
The woman said was verbally abused when she asked for the cars and money back. The man also threatened to blackmail her with pictures of them in indelicate situations.
Unable to pay off the loans, the victim said she now risked being taken to court and declared bankrupt, which would ruin her career in the civil service.