A 27-year-old Chinese woman who was believed to have been kidnapped for a 25-million-baht ransom was found at a shopping mall in Bang Na district on Saturday evening.
According to media reports, police found Lu Xinlei at HomePro Bangna. She was brought to Phra Khanong police station where she met her mother and elder sister, who had just flown in from China after reports of the suspected abduction.
It was reported that the Chinese woman worked for a property company in Japan and a call scam gang who claiming to be Japanese authorities told her that she had violated an anti-money-laundering law.
She was ordered to transfer to them 17 million yen for examination, leave for either Thailand or Singapore and not to contact her parents in Shanghai.
The Chinese woman arrived in Thailand on Wednesday last week. She was ordered to change her SIM card and to regularly move to different hotels.
On Friday last week a man called her parents in China and told them that she had been kidnapped and that they must pay a ransom of 5 million yuan (about 25 million baht) for their daughter's safe release. A Chinese-language interpreter forwarded the parents' complaint to police later on Friday.
Police believed that both Ms Lu and her parents had fallen victim to a call scam gang that had tricked them through a chat application – without any real abduction taking place.