PATTAYA – More than 30 foreigners brought Supawadee Thongnoi, 33, to the Pattaya City Police Station and handed over 40 passports to the Pattaya City Police Investigation Unit to charge the woman with fraud and harming foreigners.
Previously, foreigners had filed complaints at the Pattaya City Police Station claiming they had given Supawadee, the former teacher of a language school, their passports to renew their visas at the Immigration Department.
Each person had paid Supawadee 32,000 baht to process the visa extension, but they had not received their passports back. This resulted in some foreigners’ passports expiring while they were still in Thailand.
Chanidapha Thowskul, 36, a representative of the school where foreigners enroll, said there were victims who were foreign tourists who contacted the school to sign up for courses. However, the school could not find the passport details in the system. The foreigners said that they had contacted and paid through Supawadee.
When the school investigated, it found that there were over 100 victims from more than 10 countries. Some of them had their passports confiscated and had overstayed in Thailand for more than 90 days.
Later, the group of victims planned to meet Supawadee by pretending to reclaim their passports and saying that they were not worried about the money and did not want it back. As soon as they found Supawadee, they informed the police and had her taken to the police station. The woman denied all the allegations, but the authorities have clear evidence that they will collect to prosecute her.
Meanwhile, the police are also negotiating with Supawadee’s agents to return the passports to the many tourists.
