Foreign scammers used a bank at a popular department store in Bangkok to steal, not rob, a lot of money.
Mrs. Jay, 28, and Mr. Joseph, 47, both Australian nationals, were arrested at the Thalang Police Station in Phuket for stealing 2.5 million baht in cash from a Chinese man at a department store in the Ladprao district, according to a press conference at Phaholyothin Police Station on June 2.
A 35-year-old Chinese man named Gao filed a complaint on May 29 with a Phaholyothin Police Station investigator alleging that someone stole his money after tricking him online on May 28 by contacting him via the Telegram app and claiming to want to sell him digital currency.
A white foreign man who claimed to be the agent in charge of collecting the money welcomed Mr. Gao when he arrived at the bank. This foreigner allowed him to converse with a bitcoin merchant, who requested that he deliver money to the foreigner. The foreigner pretended to put an envelope of money in his backpack and place it on a chair next to him while waiting for a digital money transfer. The bag was then stolen, and the foreign man pretended he didn’t know where it was before fleeing.
The CCTV footage showed a white foreign woman picking up a bag of money and walking out of the bank, according to officers at Phaholyothin police station. They suspected this woman was a foreign man’s collaborator. They also discovered that the two had travelled to Thailand together.
The following day, this pair met in front of a currency exchange business in Nana to convert their cash for digital currency. They later boarded a plane at Suvarnabhumi Airport bound for Phuket Province. The police then requested that the Phuket immigration officer arrest them.
Initially, police arrested them and sent them to Phaholyothin Police Station investigators for prosecution.
