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Two American women held in Thailand after allegedly caught with fake US dollars


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Posted
36 minutes ago, Makara said:

 

Honestly baiting a phone, thief or not is crazy to me. I don't really see that kind of stuff over here--not with cell phones for certain. Baiting with cellphones, that is--no words.

There was a case here in NYC that was in the news a bit.

Cops in Central Park would leave a wallet on the ground, a bench, wherever, with about, I dunno, $50 and a ID in it (enough to warrant a certain kind of charge). Someone comes along, finds it and pockets it. Eventually they would leave the park. At that point they would be arrested, charged with theft.

The law states (and was only know to the cops dropping the wallet) that when found if you pick it up and don't turn it in it's a crime. Turning it in meant going to a Central Park police or Park Ranger station, turning it in. 

Central Park is HUGE. Nobody knows where the police/ranger station is, especially if you're a tourist.

Another choice would be to find a cop or park ranger and turn it in. A lot of effort.

Yeah, so if I remember correctly the scam came out in the press, people went nuts, all the cases where tossed out by the courts.

Posted
1 hour ago, marinediscoking said:

This sounds like the airport scam my friend got caught up in a few years ago.

 

He was at swampy on his way home and just after checking in he found a "mobile phone" on a counter someone forgot. No one was around or anywhere near him.   He pick it up and after about 5 minutes he went to the restroom and decided to throw it away as maybe it could cause trouble for him and it wasn't a nice phone anyway. As he was coming out of the restroom 3 police approached him and asked for the phone and told him they saw him on CCTV take it even by this point he didn't have it. This is all within 10 minutes.

 

The supposed owner had already made a report and said he wanted him prosecuted. So after about 10 days in jail and a lawyer recommended by the French embassy he paid 200k to settle the case and was released. He thought it was all over but it was just the beginning. 

 

He realized he shouldn't have taken the phone as the law here is anyone in possession of lost property is considered stealing. I have know him for over 10 years and he owns a condo here, has a thai wife and daughter. So he was not a tourists.

 

He was not allowed to leave as he found out and the prosecutor set a court date for about a year later. He was told to plead guilty on the advice of his lawyer paid anther large fine, can't remember that amount and was told he would be able to come back to visit his family anytime.

 

This was not the case when he flew back months later he was told at swampy they could not let him in as he was black listed for 5 years. So for 5 years he had to fly to phnom phen and have his wife and daughter visit him there.

 

What is clear is the phone was bait as I believe the money these girls found on the street was too, they just followed them waiting for them to cash it.

Scam? He took the phone and threw it out. Should never have touched it. It didn't belong to him and he didn't hand it in. That's theft.

  • Like 1
Posted
1 hour ago, giddyup said:

Bait that he took and had to pay the consequences. Obviously he went to the restroom to check if the phone was good (expensive) enough to warrant his keeping it. Your friend was a thief. I doubt if the girls were followed to Thailand from Cambodia because of some spirit money (dollars clearly marked COPY) they picked up there.

Yes a thief who blamed others for his actions.

Posted
7 minutes ago, Justfine said:

Scam? He took the phone and threw it out. Should never have touched it. It didn't belong to him and he didn't hand it in. That's theft.

I thought it was very bad judgment on his part and looked at him differently after that. I think he learned his lesson. A case like this got national attention last year in Pattaya.

https://news.thaivisa.com/article/1037/pattaya-woman-in-iphone-7-finders-keepers-case-intends-to-fight-charges-of-theft

Posted
Just now, marinediscoking said:

I thought it was very bad judgment on his part and looked at him differently after that. I think he learned his lesson. A case like this got national attention last year in Pattaya.

https://news.thaivisa.com/article/1037/pattaya-woman-in-iphone-7-finders-keepers-case-intends-to-fight-charges-of-theft

Doubt he told you the full story. I knew a couple of people who stole stuff. They would lie to people's faces about it.

Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, smx1313 said:

Makara, 

Personally I tend to favor the women in the story, meaning I'm not on the scam wagon.

I also think that people here going out of their way to torment the friends and family of these women  is ugly behavior. Lets say it is a scam, there is no reason to reach out to people in pain simply to add more pain while hidden safely behind a keyboard. Seems there are a lot of people here who are without sin and get much pleasure from throwing the 1st stone.

 

However, there is one thing that is bugging me.

 

One of the women is a bartender, or works in a bar. I did that kind of work for many years.

Probably the 1st and most important  thing you learn is how to spot fake money. Counterfeiters love crowded hectic bars.  So you become very skilled at it spotting fakes and people trying to pass them. You then alert all the other bartenders, cashiers, security immediately. If you let a fake $100 go by it can get docked from your pay. You are responsible for it.

So that being the case, how could they have been so fooled by "spirit money". In fact, if it was dirty wet and muddy it's actually easier to spot it just by how it feels. A blind person could literally find the fake.

 

See, that part just does not add up. They had the money for several days, countless times to feel it, exam it. And as someone who worked in a bar they are trained to spot fakes.

That does not pass the smell test.

My hunch? Just guessing, they didn't find it. It was sold or given to them by someone in cambodia, maybe saying that it would be easy to exchange in Thailand, nobody gets hurt, that stuff is insured...whatever.

Maybe they assumed the Thais to be simple 3rd world hillbillies.

 

So now they need to be saved, and the go fund me is real, not part of a scam.

 

Just my thoughts. I hope I'm wrong.

I thought it was what is known a "spirit money", money that is either burned or used at funerals in Asian countries as part of the ceremony. I think that money is marked COPY, so you wouldn't have to be any kind of expert to see it was fake. The money was supposed to have been muddied, maybe in an effort to hide the word COPY.

P1050523.JPG

Edited by giddyup
Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, amykat said:

Debating the issue on a forum is one thing.  Going out of your way to sabotage their funding efforts is quite something else, over and over again!!  All it took was a phone call. As I said on here many times, NOBODY did a damn thing to investigate, just sat on their ass and made wild allegations and stated EMPHATICALLY that the police do NOT know about this case, the courts don't know, the embassy doesn't know, which in fact was a lie.

But many things do or did seem just very strange about this case and it looked a lot like a scam. It was necessary to talk with 4 persons and to call 3 different numbers before we got the confirmation, because the police stations are not connected with each other. There are 5 police stations and the tourist police in Chiang Mai, and a police station can't just look up cases/arrests of the other stations.

Anybody of the people who have all the informations (The women, husband, boyfriend) could just have written that they got arrested by police from the Phuping police station, and it would have indeed been very easy to get the confirmation, i don't know why they didn't do it.

 

 

And when some people say not everything is in the news that's of course also right. I forgot at which police station they told us this, but one of them did recently arrest a Farang because he stole something, they asked if we call because of him. I didn't see a news here about a Farang thief yet.

Edited by jackdd
  • Like 1
Posted

And once again adults stoop to preaching extremes while completely ignoring facts. When are you people going to learn that you can't just spew out your personal opinions as facts? It's like reading the topic about the now deceased youtuber all over again.

 

NO – the girls are not completely innocent little angels with hearts of gold. Worst case, they knowingly tried to pass off fake notes as real. Best case, they found money belonging to someone else and decided to keep it for themselves rather than doing the right thing. It doesn't matter what the police would have done with the money, that doesn't give you the right to just take it. It's like finding an open car in a bad neighborhood and going "hey, I'm just gonna take this, otherwise someone else is just gonna do it."

 

NO – you don't know that this is a scam, you don't know they knowingly tried to exchange fake money and you don't know that they're collaborating with friends and family to trick people into donating. It's totally fine if you believe that, but don't post it here as if they're facts.

 

There's a healthy middle-way here people. You can be very skeptical and not believe what they're saying without acting like you're sitting on information no one else seemingly has. Stop acting like they did nothing wrong, and stop acting like you know it's a scam – you're both equally wrong.

Posted (edited)
3 minutes ago, Myran said:

And once again adults stoop to preaching extremes while completely ignoring facts. When are you people going to learn that you can't just spew out your personal opinions as facts? It's like reading the topic about the now deceased youtuber all over again.

There's a healthy middle-way here people. You can be very skeptical and not believe what they're saying without acting like you're sitting on information no one else seemingly has. Stop acting like they did nothing wrong, and stop acting like you know it's a scam – you're both equally wrong.

If people took your advice we wouldn't have 58 pages, more like 1. That probably applies to nearly every post on TV.

Edited by giddyup
Posted
2 hours ago, Myran said:

And once again adults stoop to preaching extremes while completely ignoring facts. When are you people going to learn that you can't just spew out your personal opinions as facts? It's like reading the topic about the now deceased youtuber all over again.

 

NO – the girls are not completely innocent little angels with hearts of gold. Worst case, they knowingly tried to pass off fake notes as real. Best case, they found money belonging to someone else and decided to keep it for themselves rather than doing the right thing. It doesn't matter what the police would have done with the money, that doesn't give you the right to just take it. It's like finding an open car in a bad neighborhood and going "hey, I'm just gonna take this, otherwise someone else is just gonna do it."

 

NO – you don't know that this is a scam, you don't know they knowingly tried to exchange fake money and you don't know that they're collaborating with friends and family to trick people into donating. It's totally fine if you believe that, but don't post it here as if they're facts.

So where is the facts?????? 

Posted
2 hours ago, jackdd said:

 

Anybody of the people who have all the informations (The women, husband, boyfriend) could just have written that they got arrested by police from the Phuping police station, and it would have indeed been very easy to get the confirmation, i don't know why they didn't do it.

 

Well imagine being them.  It is all true.  The woman were mostly locked up so unable to do things.  The people in the US have many emergency things to accomplish and their life to attend to also. They got a lot of bad information at first, which we know is normal here, you can't get the most simple answer to anything without asking 5 different people.  Plus the lawyers are going to try to take advantage of them.  Anyone living here should be able to predict total chaos for those people!!

 

Then you start getting random attacks by anonymous people, which ranged all over the place.  There was not one clear attack that asked for one piece of information.  They were not even asking, they were just attacking and accusing and stating that certain things were true.  Many made it appear, on this forum, as if they had done the work and asked, or had special knowledge, that the police, court, and embassy did not know.  But I knew they were full of shit because I have been reading this forum since the very start.   But people who are not from here won't know that.

 

I think people are being disingenuous when they claim they are just worried about it being a scam and trying to do a good deed because frankly many of these fund me things related to Thailand could be just the same and I have never seen such as response as this! Well except for the guy up North with the heart condition but that seemed to be limited to a few people and they were proven wrong ... BUT, he was not a tourist.

 

A few years ago an American Asian guy came here and died in a moto accident on Koh Samui.  He flew first class and stayed in nice hotel, drove a 750 BMW at home, lived in an expensive condo, and he had this all documented on videos on the internet.  His siblings owned businesses, one was a doctor ...they wanted to fly his body home and I think they had some small medical bill to pay off. They wanted to raise $100K if I remember correctly and they raised even more than that!  I was thinking what the hell ...they are going to have some money after they dispose of his assets, he was single, that is outrageous money to ask just to fly a dead body home.  ( Oh, yes some of it was for the burial I guess.)

 

Now those people might have just cremated the body, and pocketed all that money, who knows?  People wrote about it here because they were angry about it, but I don't remember one person claiming that ...that maybe it was all a big scam and they would cremate it and pocket all the money. Why not??  Oh, because you wouldn't look good if you said that about someone who just had a death in their family??  People who had a death in their family must all be honest right?  None of them could be opportunists.

 

But here we have one dishonest act so of course lets go down the slippery slope and everyone involved must be giant con artists?? 

 

Some people on here were rude and attempted to bully and intimidate their friend from the US who came on here and tried to tell everyone it was not a scam. She was not a battle-hardened TV'er or old Asia hand. It was pretty disgusting some of the things people felt entitled to demand and they way in which they did it.  Some things have been deleted here.

 

You guys should at least try to keep your abuse within the club here so to speak. You have forgotten what the normal civilized world is like ...some of you.

 

Anyway, thank you for making the call and helping everyone involved. You did a good deed!!

 

 

  • Like 2
Posted
20 minutes ago, amykat said:

 

Well imagine being them.  It is all true.  The woman were mostly locked up so unable to do things.  The people in the US have many emergency things to accomplish and their life to attend to also. They got a lot of bad information at first, which we know is normal here, you can't get the most simple answer to anything without asking 5 different people.  Plus the lawyers are going to try to take advantage of them.  Anyone living here should be able to predict total chaos for those people!!

 

Then you start getting random attacks by anonymous people, which ranged all over the place.  There was not one clear attack that asked for one piece of information.  They were not even asking, they were just attacking and accusing and stating that certain things were true.  Many made it appear, on this forum, as if they had done the work and asked, or had special knowledge, that the police, court, and embassy did not know.  But I knew they were full of shit because I have been reading this forum since the very start.   But people who are not from here won't know that.

 

I think people are being disingenuous when they claim they are just worried about it being a scam and trying to do a good deed because frankly many of these fund me things related to Thailand could be just the same and I have never seen such as response as this! Well except for the guy up North with the heart condition but that seemed to be limited to a few people and they were proven wrong ... BUT, he was not a tourist.

 

A few years ago an American Asian guy came here and died in a moto accident on Koh Samui.  He flew first class and stayed in nice hotel, drove a 750 BMW at home, lived in an expensive condo, and he had this all documented on videos on the internet.  His siblings owned businesses, one was a doctor ...they wanted to fly his body home and I think they had some small medical bill to pay off. They wanted to raise $100K if I remember correctly and they raised even more than that!  I was thinking what the hell ...they are going to have some money after they dispose of his assets, he was single, that is outrageous money to ask just to fly a dead body home.  ( Oh, yes some of it was for the burial I guess.)

 

Now those people might have just cremated the body, and pocketed all that money, who knows?  People wrote about it here because they were angry about it, but I don't remember one person claiming that ...that maybe it was all a big scam and they would cremate it and pocket all the money. Why not??  Oh, because you wouldn't look good if you said that about someone who just had a death in their family??  People who had a death in their family must all be honest right?  None of them could be opportunists.

 

But here we have one dishonest act so of course lets go down the slippery slope and everyone involved must be giant con artists?? 

 

Some people on here were rude and attempted to bully and intimidate their friend from the US who came on here and tried to tell everyone it was not a scam. She was not a battle-hardened TV'er or old Asia hand. It was pretty disgusting some of the things people felt entitled to demand and they way in which they did it.  Some things have been deleted here.

 

You guys should at least try to keep your abuse within the club here so to speak. You have forgotten what the normal civilized world is like ...some of you.

 

Anyway, thank you for making the call and helping everyone involved. You did a good deed!!

 

 

 

 

"Then you start getting random attacks by anonymous people, which ranged all over the place.  There was not one clear attack that asked for one piece of information.  They were not even asking, ..."

 

The opposite is true.

 

 

Posted
4 minutes ago, scorecard said:

 

 

"Then you start getting random attacks by anonymous people, which ranged all over the place.  There was not one clear attack that asked for one piece of information.  They were not even asking, ..."

 

The opposite is true.

 

 

Okay, so why don't you show me that??

Posted
Just now, amykat said:

Okay, so why don't you show me that??

 

Absolutely no need to do that;

 

There are numerous posts asking questions about the facts re where / how the money was found was it real / was it spirit money and the other circumstances of changing the money etc., etc.

 

Plus dozens of posts asking about whether the police, the US embassy had been involved, were they / weren't they charged, out on bail etc. 

 

 

  • Like 1
Posted
13 minutes ago, scorecard said:

 

 

"Then you start getting random attacks by anonymous people, which ranged all over the place.  There was not one clear attack that asked for one piece of information.  They were not even asking, ..."

 

The opposite is true.

 

 

We have ask for facts from beginning and there is still no facts my wife have called police too she get this answer 

He can't give information out to people if they not related in all cases 

  • Like 2
Posted (edited)

one of the ladies out on bail has posted on reddit:

 

Hello :-) I am one of the women spoken of in this article. The reason we were asking people to not contact the US embassy is because they have already been contacted so many times by our concerned friends and family. The embassy told us to ask our friends and family to stop contacting them because they were getting so overwhelmed with calls and it was taking away from the time and effort they could put into more important matters pertaining to our case.

 

i don't get it.  they said the bills were covered with

mud, so they did not see the "copy" printed on them.

on all of them.  they were trying to change the bills

at a money changer.  who changes muddy bills?

can't imagine any place would even bother to

check heavily soiled bills for authenticity.  they'd

just refuse them outright.

Edited by ChouDoufu
  • Like 1
Posted
10 hours ago, jackdd said:

I put some effort in trying to discover the truth about this story.

 

In short: NO SCAM

 

In longer:

I made my GF call the police to be sure i don't understand something wrong.

Everybody can stop saying it's a scam, if you don't believe my word and want to confirm it by yourself: Call the Tourist Police in Chiang Mai, they will confirm it.

The two girls were arrested when they tried to exchange the money which was counterfeit.

I have a phone number of a person who can maybe provide more details on this case, but nobody is answering this phone yet, if i should get more infos from there later i will of course share them with you.

My wife get another answer 

If you not related they will not answer anything and that is for all cases 

That's is fair enough 

So I hardly to believe you sorry 

  • Like 2
Posted
7 hours ago, marinediscoking said:

What is clear is the phone was bait as I believe the money these girls found on the street was too, they just followed them waiting for them to cash it.

 

You do realise that they found the money in Sihanoukville in Cambodia and only were caught several days later after they tried to use it in Chiang Mai, right? 

 

That would be quite the scam if Chiang Mai police were traveling to Cambodian beach towns to drop Cambodian spirit money in front of tourists hoping that they'd fly to Chiang Mai afterwards and try to spend it. 

  • Like 2
Posted
23 minutes ago, ChouDoufu said:

one of the ladies out on bail has posted on reddit:

 

Hello :-) I am one of the women spoken of in this article. The reason we were asking people to not contact the US embassy is because they have already been contacted so many times by our concerned friends and family. The embassy told us to ask our friends and family to stop contacting them because they were getting so overwhelmed with calls and it was taking away from the time and effort they could put into more important matters pertaining to our case.

 

i don't get it.  they said the bills were covered with

mud, so they did not see the "copy" printed on them.

on all of them.  they were trying to change the bills

at a money changer.  who changes muddy bills?

can't imagine any place would even bother to

check heavily soiled bills for authenticity.  they'd

just refuse them outright.

A embassy will never say that so much trying to keep this story quiet and I understand why so meny not believe this story 

Why only one out on bail in beginning the story said bout was out on bail but police has confiscate their passport 

Sorry keep the story straight or else believes will be non believers for sure 

Posted
7 hours ago, amykat said:

 

You realize don't you, that the funding campaign was not focusing on donations from Thailand?  Just because we are aware of it does not mean they expected money from anybody here.  In the US you are entitled to a defense attorney at no cost if you can't afford one.  People might feel they are helping to provide that. It is considered a right like some countries think about medical care ...you have heard about that I am sure??

 

Debating the issue on a forum is one thing.  Going out of your way to sabotage their funding efforts is quite something else, over and over again!!  All it took was a phone call. As I said on here many times, NOBODY did a damn thing to investigate, just sat on their ass and made wild allegations and stated EMPHATICALLY that the police do NOT know about this case, the courts don't know, the embassy doesn't know, which in fact was a lie. They personally did not know and that was the full extent of it.  Why would they be expected to know?

 

I know about other more serious crimes, where I saw the arrest happen with my own eyes, where I know the people involved, and it was never reported in any papers here.  The press can't report every single crime. The case went fully through the justice system.

 

I have seen several fund me attempts and I have never seen one bill presented or proof of what the money will be spent on or how it will be accounted for later. That seems to be how it works, it you want to give you just do it.  If you personally are thinking of giving and want some proof or have questions, I guess you can write to the organizer and ask? What they did was defamation was it not?  Why didn't they go to the press then and make their wild claims? Oh, because then they would have been forced to back it up, like call the police and check and then their little balloon would have popped and case closed!!

 

(I am not suggesting you did any of these things guyfromanotherforum.)

Thank you AmyKat. Precisely.

  • Like 1
Posted
2 hours ago, Henrik Andersen said:

So where is the facts?????? 

What? How the hell should I know? Go look for the facts if you want them.

  • Haha 1
Posted
2 hours ago, scorecard said:

 

 

"Then you start getting random attacks by anonymous people, which ranged all over the place.  There was not one clear attack that asked for one piece of information.  They were not even asking, ..."

 

The opposite is true.

 

 

You'e wrong. 

  • Like 1
Posted
12 hours ago, Henrik Andersen said:

Can I ask you this please 

Why is it so important for you to try convincing us members in here this is not a scam?? 

What you get out of that? 

I just not get it

If you really want us to change our opinions and meaby help it will be better if you somehow can show us some prove of this meaby just meaby we will see this case with different eyes 

I came on here after coming across this online, and saw all of the crazy stories being made up, and how a lot of people on here were so sure it was a scam without even realizing how absolutely hard it would be for it to be a scam. I can understand that the story doesn't quite add up to the outside view (yet) but to outwardly blame people in the US of trying to scam their own friends and family by starting a gofundme was just astronomical accusations. It needed to be said. Gofundme is actually quite common over here. It is like "paying it forward" where people can donate to a cause of their choosing, if they feel it is worthy. And yes strangers too can donate--but a lot of people donating are connected in one way or another to the women. I think that the reason they are getting upwards of 10,000 usd for this is because of the possibility of them being stuck there a long time, away from their country, in an unfamiliar judicial system that is completely different from ours, without money for a lawyer. I did not come here to defend their innocence. I have my own opinions on all of it, but really that doesn't matter here. What matters is the gofundme is not a scam. 

  • Like 1
Posted
On 3/2/2018 at 5:01 AM, amykat said:

There is not ONE person here who has done any investigation worth a damn and actually knows that the police in Chiang Mai are unaware of this case, that the courts don't know about it, that the Embassy doesn't know about it, etc. You all have been passing on each other's rumors and crap you read off FB from various people at points in time who didn't know what they were talking about ...or whatever.

 

"I asked a cop in Chiang Rai and he hadn't heard about the case" well that is proof for sure!!  That was the most official thing I remember reading here.  A lot of you are conflating subjects  ...somebody in the world got fake dollars out an ATM and posted that on a travel forum and Brandon posted that on something as evidence that there are fake dollars in Cambodia floating around and you guys are sure that he planted that!!   You guys are starting to sound like you are posting from a psychiatric ward somewhere!!

 

An intelligent person can consider two differing perspectives at one time.  Some of you are demanding definitive evidence but offering none of your own!!  And then using that lack as proof that you are correct.  But these women don't need to come on TV to lay out their entire case  ..that would not be prudent.  You are bullying them.  This is their life and not a joke.  Don't give money as we know you won't.  What are you going to do for them when you find out you are wrong?  It is fine to speculate a bit and consider all options but one of those reasonable options, is that they got arrested and the fund raising part is NOT a scam!!

 

Ironically, the more exposure this story gets, the higher the cost to make it go away.

  • Like 1
Posted
30 minutes ago, lannarebirth said:

 

Ironically, the more exposure this story gets, the higher the cost to make it go away.

I really hope that is not true. And incase that is the truth I am not saying another single word. That would be so incredibly corrupt and wrong on so many levels. Talk about morality. I'm done.

Posted

The Gofundme and Share websites are all smoke and mirrors. While even the Thai Govt. is watching the bank roll in on those sites it's the benefit concert on March 9th money at her bar that will bring in the big bucks. That will all be under the table money. No records. Wink, wink.

  • Like 1
Posted
2 hours ago, Makara said:

I really hope that is not true. And incase that is the truth I am not saying another single word. That would be so incredibly corrupt and wrong on so many levels. Talk about morality. I'm done.

Ironically, the woman friends where telling people not to involve the press for that very reason. Many people here took that as an admission of guilt, even while knowing that if the story got big things could get worse. The women also asked their friends  to not say anything derogatory about Thailand, it's people or institutions. If they had, please delete it. 

 

Before you go Makara, I addressed you personally on post #853. I hope you get a chance to see it before you go radio silent. 

 

 

  • Like 1
Posted (edited)
8 hours ago, Henrik Andersen said:

My wife get another answer 

If you not related they will not answer anything and that is for all cases 

That's is fair enough 

So I hardly to believe you sorry 

What did she ask them? My GF explained that two Farang girls are asking for money on a website because they got arrested for counterfeit money last week, and that she wants to know if this is real or a scam. She did not ask for any personal things.

I just saw that if you look up "Tourist police Chiang Mai" on Google you just get the callcenter number 1155, who knows with who you talk there and maybe they just don't know anything. This is the Chiang Mai Tourist police number which we called which we got from another police station: 053212147

Edited by jackdd
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