A PhD medical student has fallen victim to a call-centre scam gang posing as a mobile phone company employee and a police officer, who duped him into transferring money and handing cash to their accomplices, resulting of losses of 11 million baht over three days.
The victim, identified only as ‘Bank’, on Friday brought evidence to the offices of the Sai Mai Tong Rod (Survive) group, whose Facebook page has 500,000 followers and serves as a forum for people needing help.
The 25-year-old man said his ordeal began at 3pm on Aug 22, when he received a phone call from someone claiming to be an employee of a mobile phone company.
The caller told him that someone had used his name to register a phone number in Loei province to defraud other people.
He was told to contact the Muang Loei police station immediately if he was not involved. The call was then transferred to a man claiming to be a police officer.
The scammer then added him on the Line messaging app and made a video call, so that Mr Bank could see that he was indeed talking to someone in uniform.
The bogus police officer took advantage of the victim’s emotional state, as he was under stress while working on a research project. The ‘police officer’ claimed failure to comply would ruin everything he had worked so hard to achieve academically, and could even result in his parents being arrested.
The scammer also instructed him to deceive his family by claiming he needed financial support to pursue further studies in Switzerland.
Frightened and convinced by the bogus officer, Mr Bank made 11 transfers on Aug 23 to six bank accounts, totalling 4.5 million baht.
The scammers then claimed the amount was insufficient and instructed him to prepare cash, saying they would send people to collect it from his residence.
The cash pickups were made on three consecutive days: 1.6 million baht on Aug 23, 2 million on Aug 24 and another 2.9 million on Aug 25. The losses now totalled 10,995,000 baht, according to the victim.
Late on Aug 25, the scammers called again and threatened that people linked to the bank accounts would come to kill him to silence him. They ordered him to flee.
After Mr Bank fled and called his family to tell them what had happened, he learned that he had been duped and immediately reported the case to the Phaya Thai police station in Bangkok.
Ekkapop Luangprasert, the founder of the Sai Mai Tong Rod Facebook page, urged police to examine CCTV footage to identify and track down the people who collected the cash from the victim’s residence.
As the incident had only recently occurred, he said investigators should still be able to trace the financial transactions and follow the money trail.
He also warned people who allow their bank accounts to be used as mule accounts that they would face legal action and be held liable for compensating victims for the damage caused.