By John Ogunsemore
A Thai woman identified simply as Orathai has been arrested for her role in pulling off a $186 million romance scam, the biggest in the southeast Asian nation’s history.
Orathai, 52, was arrested by operatives of the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) at Hat Yai International Airport upon arrival from Malaysia on Saturday, Bangkok Post reports.
According to the report, the suspect was wanted for participating in a transnational crime organisation and colluding in money laundering due to her alleged involvement in the 2022 romance scam, among other offences.
The case tagged Thailand’s costliest romance scam involved a transnational gang using a fake LinkedIn profile of a US army doctor working in Afghanistan to deceive the chief financial officer (CFO) of a multinational company’s Thailand branch and stealing 6.3 billion baht (US$186 million) from her company.
The Thai CFO was arrested and charged with multiple crimes including theft and arrest warrants were issued for nearly 100 Thais and Nigerian nationals.
Authorities continue efforts to arrest the fleeing suspects.
The CIB said Orathai confessed to being the person in the arrest warrant when operatives presented her with the document.
She claimed that her Nigerian partner asked her to open bank accounts in Thailand because he was unable to do so being of foreign nationality. The accounts were for him to open a company in Thailand.
Orathai said she opened multiple bank accounts through which her partner made deposit and withdrawal transactions. Investigators found financial links between Orathai’s bank accounts and fraudulent fund transfers in the case, leading to her arrest.
She was said to have met and fallen in love with her Nigerian partner while working at a massage shop in Malaysia in 2017.
She said she lived with him for two years, during which he sorted all her expenses so she did not have to work, and he asked her to open bank accounts for him as he wanted to run a business in Thailand.
“He paid me 6,500 baht per account. I only knew later that my bank accounts had been used to receive money from people who had been defrauded,” Orathai said.
She was arrested after police got a hint that she was returning to Thailand to visit her child.