Phuket woman transfers over 2 million baht to alleged Facebook scammer

[HaleySabai]

Can't help but think Nigerians. Its definitely their style.

...they can only wish that they were this sophisticated. Its most likely a good scam for this part of the world...no shortage of "Greedy" individuals.

[Bikkii]

Great to see its not just stupid farang getting suckered into this rubbish.

[12DrinkMore]

As usual, a large number of respondents have misread the news article.

She paid the 2 million Baht because the scammers threatened her with charges of money laundering. The 48K was for customs duty on her "gifts".

I just went through the same scam happening to a lady-friend of mine.

He contacted her through Facebook and started chatting her up over the course of a week or so. (Note the lady in the news spent a couple of months chatting to her "friend"). Very chatty and soon professing true love. These scammers use the pics of successful white males as their own. It"s all on the net.

Fortunately, this lady did not understand all the English he was using as he promised to send all the "gifts" and come soon to see her, so she showed me the messages. The parcel was to arrive in 2 days and he provided a tracking website.

I told her the she would receive a call in the next day or so requesting money to pay customs duties, fees or the like. She was initially reluctant to let go of the dream, though she still hoped I was wrong.

The "money requesting text" arrived 5 minutes after I finished telling her this!

She replied that if he would wire her the money to pay the fees she would "accept the parcel"

I don't like posting "me too" bullshit, but exactly the same happened to a very nice young lady with a job. She was soooo excited that a wealthy man from Europe was going to send her a box full of presents. After getting "The Phone Call" she was only to happy to rush to the bank before it opened and transfer the equivalent of two months' salary so that the parcel could "clear customs".

Unfortunately my GF only told me that afternoon.

I said to tell her friend, "they'll ask for more, send no more money". Sure enough the next demand came the next day.

Very sad.

Probably took her a year or two to save that money.

[Satcommlee]

Do you think my 10% share of a Nigerian Generals Estate I am still waiting for is also a scam?

[Malthus101]

[Jim walker]

I hope the evil internet scammer gets caught and is sentenced to 75 years as they do in Thailand or at least 30hrs community service,

[thedragon]

Wow, I just got this story in my inbox.

A female friend of my wife also met someone who claimed to be from the UK on Facebook, who then allegedly sent her a parcel with money and then someone else called her saying they were Customs and that she had to pay import tax. They kept coming back at her with more and more fees. She spent about 1,8 million Baht in total until she told my wife about it, who told me and I then told her that it was a scam.

I went to the police station with her a few months ago but she didn't want to file a complaint because she was afraid of her family finding out how stupid she was so she never filed a complaint and went home.

Oh yes, and she's also from Phuket. Seems like there's a gang down there doing this. From the emails she got from them and the way they were written, I assumed they are Nigerian.

[carvets]

This is an alarmingly common scam, my sister in-law nearly got caught by this one..

A lot of very negative comments on here regarding the victim.. questions as to how she raised the cash etc.. does it occur to anyone that this may have been her life savings.. or she may have borrowed money secured on her house etc... have some compassion here, she may well have been stupid, but she is a victim non the less.

She is nothing but a victim of her own greed, bet her eyes lit up when she heard 270k Euros, yeah right.

And it looks like we have become the victims of your inability to read accurately . Try going through the story again,...sloooowly .

[kotsak]

Malthus101, on 31 Oct 2013 - 22:21, said:

Picard-Head-in-Hand.jpg

A single facepalm is not enough..

[Gotalaugh]

She paid 2M Baht tea money, to get what she was told/thought was 92M Baht in an illegal money laundering scam?

You cant fix stupid.

No you can't... re-do your math

Done. You could be a little nicer about it though. Must be tough going through life with a chip on your shoulder.

Yeah come on Wade especially when you can see how sensitive Shot was being about the poor lady's plight.

[MaxYakov]

Please give me her facebook name, I want to start an online romance with her.

Why? She's been burnt and is tapped-out.

Besides, she's probably now aware of your phony FedUpEx.com website.

Edited November 1, 2013 by MaxYakov

[shaurene]

Well this is a new one and bloody good. But she fell for it. Feel sorry in a way for her, thinking she was going to get a Falange. I wonder where she got all that money from, maybe her last Falange she scammed.

What goes around comes around, wot.

[marell]

So what's the essence of the complaint to the Police?

'I was promised a package of stolen/drug/laundered money to be sent to me by a thief, but I didn't receive the stolen money, and money was stolen from me instead.' Err...

It's odd that the woman did not report the offer of the obviously dodgy 'EUR 270,000' to the Police earlier!

It's an old aphorism, but that makes it no less true: 'You can't con an honest person.'

This is blatantly untrue. May not be the case here, but honest people get conned every day.

What about someone who unknowingly buys a worthless air ticket from a bogus travel company? What about the old guy talked into investing his pension in some investment scam. What about the lady who buys a used car with doctored paperwork? What about the homeowner who puts a deposit down on home repairs and finds the contractor has disappeared? What about the person......etc......etc......etc.

The list of honest people who have been conned is virtually endless. Count yourself lucky if you're not one of them.

Edited November 1, 2013 by marell

[sunshine51]

I feel sorry for this woman....however....

W. C. Fields once famously stated...

"There's a sucker born every minute."

[newermonkey]

Please give me her facebook name, I want to start an online romance with her.

Oooohh so you want to finance her next lost or this one?

No I am just hopping she is hooked on giving lots of money away and I want to be there to when she is in the mood again.

[newermonkey]

Please give me her facebook name, I want to start an online romance with her.

Why? She's been burnt and is tapped-out.

Besides, she's probably now aware of your phony FedUpEx.com website.

No I think she is still convinced she is going to find a dumb rich farang. except what she is always going to be unaware of is that there is cleverness and cunning on a level she would find difficult to understand.

Thais always under estimate other peoples abilities especially foreigners (white ones) & they think they are always right and know more. This is and has been their biggest downfall.

FYI I am only joking when I say I want to contact her, I am actually an honest farang person.

[pbfisher]

Crikey, the exact opposite of what we usually hear about right? farang loses all to Thai lady etc.. Not saying it makes it right but it is kind of eyebrow lifting stuff.. By the way, do we know the skank really anAmerican or was it another Nigerian special do we think?

Can't help but think Nigerians.

Its definitely their style.

Actually, more the style of Cameroonian scammers. They're legendary for pet scams where they offer valuable or exotic pets for sale internationally. The modus operandi is often having an apparently legitimate transport company that is transporting the pets or other valuable items to the buyer. The buyer receives a call to say the goods have been held up at customs and a money must be paid to release them. Usually though the money is paid to Western Union not a local account.

[cup-O-coffee]

Where's P.T. Barnum when you need him?

[MantisMan]

In regards to the Negerian Scams, when I got those kinds of emails, I would reply that I was a very rich business man and that I was going to fly out there within the week, find them, do them bodily harm, including the idiots to on his left and right (usually they're at internet shops doing this dirty work).

Could I get in trouble for that? Threatening bodily harm or even death to these idiots?

Just checking. I will need to cover myself when NSA goons knock on my door.

[cup-O-coffee]

In regards to the Negerian Scams, when I got those kinds of emails, I would reply that I was a very rich business man and that I was going to fly out there within the week, find them, do them bodily harm, including the idiots to on his left and right (usually they're at internet shops doing this dirty work).

Could I get in trouble for that? Threatening bodily harm or even death to these idiots?

Just checking. I will need to cover myself when NSA goons knock on my door.

Agreed, but if I may suggest, do not even open these suspicious emails and especially any attachments or links, as they can infect your OS. If you have anti-virus and spyware software (e.g. malwarebytes & spyware blaster) on your OS and for your Web-Mail and/or desktop mail then that is always good, but I simply banish these to the pit, and don't waste my time.

Don't be another statistic right behind this gullible woman. Good luck!

[phitsanulokjohn]

The greedy being conned by the greedy,everyone seems to find their own type of people.Birds of a feather.

[MMarlow]

I pity the victim. Some people believe trusting equals foolishness. But what would life be like if we didn't have friends or family members we could trust? She needs love like all of us. Someone claims to have sent her a package, the tracking website looks legit, she gets phone calls from live people about it supposedly helping her to get her surprise package of goodies... When the man told her that inspectors discovered EUR 270,000, I would have stopped believing. And having been lied to many times by con artists, I would have asked Nick Henry to deal with it. Hope the cops are able to trace the bank accounts to the criminals and recover her cash.

I hope the cops trace where she got the cash!

She had sold some land!

[MMarlow]

So what's the essence of the complaint to the Police?

'I was promised a package of stolen/drug/laundered money to be sent to me by a thief, but I didn't receive the stolen money, and money was stolen from me instead.' Err...

It's odd that the woman did not report the offer of the obviously dodgy 'EUR 270,000' to the Police earlier!

It's an old aphorism, but that makes it no less true: 'You can't con an honest person.'

This is not the only report about this incident, she wasn't promised any "stolen/drug/laundered money" by "a thief".

Until the Malaysian connection called her she didn't know about the 270k.

I suppose the essence of the complaint is that she was defrauded of 2m baht.

[Tatsujin]

She should be arrested for being stupid.

[MMarlow]

....who scammed whom...... ...makes me wonder where this woman got her money to begin with,,,,, ...she called her foreign friends to get more funds......??? ...we should really question her line of work....

He scammed her...she sold some land she owned...didn't call her foreign friend for money, called them for advice...why should you question her line of work?

[MMarlow]

Can't say I'll lose any sleep over this.

What goes around ... comes around.

Makes for a tiny rebalancing of the books for the frauds committed on foreigners

So who did this woman scam?

[MMarlow]

....who scammed whom...... ...makes me wonder where this woman got her money to begin with,,,,, ...she called her foreign friends to get more funds......??? ...we should really question her line of work....

Apparently she sold land in Rawai 10 million bath, what I don't understand is why she wanted funds from falang "friends" in this "investment"?

Is she another member of the scam too?

She didn't, that is Sotirios' embellishment of the report. She went to her friends for advice.

[MMarlow]

Well this is a new one and bloody good. But she fell for it. Feel sorry in a way for her, thinking she was going to get a Falange. I wonder where she got all that money from, maybe her last Falange she scammed.

What goes around comes around, wot.

Or maybe she sold some land and was never involved in scamming others?

[MMarlow]

Crikey, the exact opposite of what we usually hear about right? farang loses all to Thai lady etc.. Not saying it makes it right but it is kind of eyebrow lifting stuff.. By the way, do we know the skank really anAmerican or was it another Nigerian special do we think?

Can't help but think Nigerians.

Its definitely their style.

Actually, more the style of Cameroonian scammers. They're legendary for pet scams where they offer valuable or exotic pets for sale internationally. The modus operandi is often having an apparently legitimate transport company that is transporting the pets or other valuable items to the buyer. The buyer receives a call to say the goods have been held up at customs and a money must be paid to release them. Usually though the money is paid to Western Union not a local account.

So actually very different from that style then. No pets and no WU.

[IrishIvan]

It states she sold land to a foreigner for 10 million baht. As the farang is not allowed to own land then she scammed that farang

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