Nigerian romance scam mule account holder arrested at airport
A THAI WOMAN returning from Malaysia was arrested as soon as her flight landed at Hat Yai Airport on charges of allowing a Nigerian romance scam gang use her bank accounts for the transfer of as much as 6.2 billion baht swindled from a victim in 2019, Thai Rath newspaper said today (Feb. 2).
Ms. Orathai Sihawong, or Tai, 52, confessed that in 2017 after she had gone to Malaysia to work at a massage shop she fell in love with a Nigerian man who was introduced by a colleague.
Her boyfriend then tricked her into opening some bank accounts for him to use, claiming as a foreigner he could not conduct financial transactions in Thailand. As she believed him she opened some mule accounts in return for 6,500 baht for each of them.
It was to these accounts that the Nigerian romance scammers got the victim, Ms. Chamanun Petchporee, a former chief financial officer of a world-class eyeglass lens manufacturing company, to transfer several large sums of money totalling over 6.2 billion baht in 2019.
Chamanun, who was later prosecuted for “jointly stealing money”, fell in love with one of the scammers who had pretended to be an American military doctor stationed in Afghanistan.
A little while later he told her that he had just got a big inheritance and wanted to transfer a large amount of money to her but there was a problem with paying a fee to do so and asked her to transfer money to cover it.
Being very much in love and trusting the scammer, Chamanun decided to steal this big sum of money and transfer it to him.
Orathai had fled to Malaysia as soon as police started cracking down on this scam with evidence gathered against her and an arrest warrant issued leading to her being immediately detained upon returning to Thailand to visit her child.
She was taken to the Crime Suppression Division for interrogation to find other suspects in this gang and proceed with legal action against her.
Photo: Thai Rath
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