The Metropolitan Police Bureau has warned the public to be on high alert for a man with a 15-year criminal record of using a dating application to meet women and then rape and rob them.
According to the warning, the man, who was identified as Wattana Srikhaney, alias Tum Chonburi, has recently used the Omi app to find his female victims.
Posing as a “nice guy”, he offers to pick the woman up and take her on a date to a certain place. He then takes her to a different location and rapes her.
In one case, a woman was raped at the edge of a rice field and abandoned there completely naked.
Some of the victims, after being raped, were robbed of cash, gold necklaces, mobile phones and other valuables.
Police believe many other women had been victimised but had not dared to file a complaint with police, or were unsure of his real identity.
The man was on police record as having committed the following crimes:
• A rape in Phanat Nikhom district, Chon Buri, on Jan 29, 2009
• A theft in Phanat Nikhom district, Chon Buri, on Feb 19, 2009
• A rape in Phanat Nikhom district, Chon Buri, on Sept 11, 2011
• Charged with drug use in Khlong Luang district, Pathum Thani, on July 13, 2017
• Charged with drug use in Si Racha district, Chon Buri, on June 3, 2017
• A rape and a robbery in Chorakhe Noi area in Bangkok’s Lat Krabang district on April 27, 2023
• A rape in Ko Chan district, Chon Buri, on May 14, 2023
Police are hunting for the man.