- Photo: The Nation/ANN
BANGKOK: Police have arrested a suspected member of a call-centre gang that has duped a beauty pageant contestant of 4 million baht.
Investigators from the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB) tracked down and arrested Parichat Sae-iew, 40, in Chaiyaphum province on Sunday (Dec 15).
Parichat’s bank account was used to receive the 4 million baht transferred from the bank account of Charlot Austin, who had finished fifth runner-up at the Miss Grand Thailand pageant in 2022.
Charlot revealed on December 8 that a call-centre gang member disguised as an officer from the Department of Special Investigation had called her and said her identity documents were used to open a bank account to launder money for Stark Corporation, a firm accused of public fraud in August.
The caller then had her receive a video call from a man disguised as a police officer on December 7.
The fake police officer managed to convince her to transfer 2 million baht twice to Parichat’s account, for checking whether it was money transferred from Stark or not.
Initially, police thought Parichat was only the owner of a mule bank account.
But on December 13, CCIB commissioner Pol Lt-General Trairong Phiewphan said police found that Parichat had acted like a gang member herself so police obtained an arrest warrant against her.
The CCIB announced that after Parichat’s account was credited with money from Charlot’s account, she travelled from Bangkok to Sa Kaeo province and crossed the border to Poi Pet in Cambodia to scan her face to further transfer money from her account to a second-tier mule bank. She travelled back to Bangkok two days later.
Normally, call-centre gangs use mule accounts to receive money from victims and they mostly operate from neighbouring countries.
As a result, police could mostly arrest only owners of mule bank accounts but were unable to retrieve the stolen money, which was transferred quickly from mule accounts to gangsters’ accounts.
The Charlot case was exceptional as one of the gang members really used her own account to receive the victim’s money directly, the CCIB said.
Charlot’s case received police’s special attention as she was a high-profile person. The CCIB took over the case from the Sutthisan Police Station.
After it became known that Charlot was deceived by the same old tactic that made headlines again and again, many netizens criticised her for not staying abreast of information and news.
The criticisms prompted her to say she was not “stupid”, but she was simply unaware of the tactic. - The Nation/ANN
