
The Central Investigation Bureau ( CIB ) announced on Sunday that a Thai woman allegedly connected to the biggest romance scam in Thailand’s history has been detained at Hat Yai International Airport.  ,
CIB police apprehended Orathai, 52 ( surname withheld ) at the arrival terminal after she disembarked from a flight from Malaysia on Saturday. According to her alleged role in the 2022 romantic fraud, she was wanted on an arrest warrant for being a part of a secret world, being a representative of a criminal organization, participating in a multinational crime organization, colluding in fraud through identity theft, and colluding in money laundering.  ,
The case, dubbed Thailand’s costliest romance scam, involved a transnational gang using a fake LinkedIn profile of a US army doctor working in Afghanistan to deceive the chief financial officer ( CFO ) of a multinational company’s Thailand branch and stealing 6.3 billion baht ( US$ 186 million ) from her company.
The Thai CFO was detained and charged with a number of acts, including fraud. Nearly 100 Thai and Nigerian citizens were the subject of subpoenas issued for their arrests. The arrest attempts are still being made.  ,
When officers gave her the arrest warrant, Orathai admitted to being the man in it, according to the CIB statement. She claimed that her Nigerian partner asked her to open bank accounts in Thailand because he was unable to do so according to his citizenship outside of the country. He had to file the records to start a business in Thailand.
Ms. Orathai established some accounts, letting her companion manage every deposit and withdrawal made there.  ,
Investigators found economic ties between Ms. Orathai’s bank accounts and those linked to some of the case’s defraudulent account transfers, which led to the issuing of her arrest warrant.  ,  ,
In 2017, Ms. Orathai met and fell in love with a Nigerian person while working in a treatment shop in Malaysia.  ,
He asked me to open bank accounts for him because he wanted to run a company in Thailand after living with him for two decades and paying all the bills so that I didn’t have to work.  ,  ,
” He paid me 6, 500 ringgit per account. I only discovered afterward that money from people who had been defrauded had been deposited into my bank accounts.
Following a tip-off that Ms. Orathai did meet her child in Thailand, the arrest was made.  ,  ,  ,