How I got scammed and caught the scammer!

[JerryinTH]

A week ago, I was looking for a new Bike on Kaidee. It’s a website for Thai’s to sell used cars, bikes etc. I called up one guy and he asked for a 20k booking fee. I agreed to it, because I really wanted the bike. 
He said someone from his staff would come over to do all the paperwork. At this time I expected the bike to be delivered too. 

Some very nice lady came to my condo, took copies of my ID card, passport, my wife's house book, rental contract and had the sales contract with her. 

Me being one of the more ‘trustful’ types of people, didn’t really think about what was going on and just went  with the flow. So I signed all papers, the contract and she asked for another 30,000 baht as down payment and they would check my papers and deliver the bike in 1-2 days.

I didn’t think much about it until later that day I realized I just bought a bike I never saw before but the seller was always responding on LINE and sending me pictures and a copy of the green book. All seemed to check out. 

 

So now I was waiting for the delivery. First delivery failed for some weird excuse. The next morning we my wife called him and he said he is just gonna take a shower and drive the bike down. 

Needless to say no bike and no one picked up the phone anymore.

 

At this point we realized what happened. While my wife was looking up his LINE id on google, we found his old employer and I pulled the CCTV from our condo and off to the police we went. 

My wife called the shop where his LINE id was listed only to find out that he got fired from this job about a year ago for taking down payments and all kinds of crooked scams. 

After we had the police report, the shop owner and my wife setup a sting operation where a 3rd person was gonna call the ‘fake’ seller of the bike and arrange a meeting. While waiting in the car, we spotted the same lady that came to our condo to take our money, rushed out of the car and circled her with the thai staff from the real motorbike shop. 

The owner of the real motorbike shop was chasing her for months, so she finally got her and was beyond grateful and relieved. After the scamming wife (the guy never showed of course and let his wife fry), made a few phone calls we stripped her off her phone and wallet, put her ‘willingly’ into a car, while filming the whole thing so she doesn’t say we hit her or something and drove her to the police station. 

 

At the station she cried like crazy and it turned out she owes millions and actually WORKS FOR THE GOVERNMENT in a proper position. Now she had 2 options. Pay the full amount back or go to jail. 
Oddly enough if she would have paid the full amount back there would have been no fine or charge against her or her husband. 
In the meantime she contacted a lawyer who brokered some deal with the real shop owner. They scamming wife, had to sign over her car at the station and pay a couple hundred thousand baht in cash. 

Later it turned out that her husband already has a warrant for his arrest out so if the police would catch him he’d go to jail no matter what. 

 

Now I got my money back AND the scammer never had the bike in the first place, so I don’t have to worry about him taking out the break pads or something like that. 

The whole incident took from around 11am to midnight but we all left happy and a little bit of justice was done. Now they have 30 days to pay all the money back or she will go to jail. There was nothing discussed about bail or anything. It was a very relaxed atmosphere in some backyard police station. At least for us as we had the girl ‘in custody’.  

 

Anyway, it was pretty <deleted> stupid from me to fork over cash without physically seeing the bike, but sometimes your eyes are bigger than our brain and not many people will admit it but that's life. 

Just wanted to share this story with you. I would post her ID card and everything else here but I don’t want her to counter sue me for libel or under the computer crime act. 

 

There are still tons of good and honest people out there but of course no one reports about them. It’s not sensational or has any impact.

Let's hope this post gives people some hope in the ‘not so proper’ justice system here. 

[JHolmesJr]

good story….but jeez….she should have paid you for wasting 13 hrs on her worthless self.

[JerryinTH]

1 minute ago, JHolmesJr said:

good story….but jeez….she should have paid you for wasting 13 hrs on her worthless self.

 

Totally agree. I was expecting some kind of compensation for the whole ordeal but there really is no fine or anything if they just pay the money back. 

No wonder they scammed so many people. 

[KittenKong]

59 minutes ago, JerryinTH said:

Anyway, it was pretty <deleted> stupid from me to fork over cash without physically seeing the ......

 

It's really very simple:

 

In Thailand, never pay anything to anyone until you have your hands on whatever it is you are buying. Scams, scams and more scams.

[lemonjelly]

Excellent story, thanks for the warning.


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