PUBLISHED: September 21, 2023, 4:00 p.m.
Many Thai women claim that after paying cash to a matching service on Facebook in the hopes of falling in love with an international man, they were duped.
According to the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau( CCIB ) yesterday, the women suffered a total loss of about 881 million baht.
According to CCIB official Kissana Phathanacharoen, victims reported to police alleging that an online match, whose Facebook page has 150 000 followers, had defrauded them of hundreds of millions of baht.
He claimed that the renowned matchmaker caters to Thai women seeking farang companions— a term used to describe people who appear to be from Europe. The quality of the men’s profiles is based on the offer price that the match determines.
For farang designers and office employees, the most basic package costs 20, 000 rmb; for developers and businessmen, it costs 30, 000; it cost doctors, pharmacists, and dairy land owners and garden owners 100 000 Baht.
The matchmaker, according to Pol Col Kissana, offers personal coaching on how to find a farang husband for 5, 000 baht and claims to make profiles on online dating sites for her clients for 7, 000 baht.
Victims claimed that the match did not introduce them to someone, and the farang men she had sent them pictures of were actually high-profile businessmen, athletes, or celebrities.
According to Pol Col Kissana, there were 2, 621 cases of matching schemes between March 2022 and September 17 of this year, making this type of relationship con the 12th most reported murder with an 881 million baht total loss.
The analysis looked into the case of seven adult sufferers who had paid more than 100,000 baht for the matchmaking service in the hopes that it would turn up high-profile men for them.
The patients went to renowned attorney Decha Kittivittayanan to report their scams to the law with the intention of taking the case to court after realizing they had been duped.
One of the sufferers revealed that she is a solitary mother looking to travel abroad with her child by finding he in the West. She made the decision to pay for the service after seeing how effective the matchmaker’s advertisement was.
Over ten survivors of the fraud, according to Mr. Decha, have contacted him.