Chinese girl threatened by call center gang, tricked into filming video and demanding 15 million from parents

Bangkok, A Chinese woman was threatened by a call center gang who tricked her into filming herself tying her hands, feet, and blindfolding her, demanding 15 million baht in ransom from her parents in China. However, the victim's father was quick to react and did not rush to transfer the money. He then contacted his friends in Thailand to notify the police and found them at a condo in the Sukhumvit area. A clip of a 21-year-old Chinese woman traveling to Thailand shows her blindfolded with scotch tape, her hands and feet bound. The call center gang sent the WeChat to the Chinese woman's parents and demanded a ransom of 3 million yuan or 15 million baht in exchange for her release. The incident occurred at 7 a.m. on July 29. Since it was an international ransom, the victim's father was shocked after seeing the clip and chatting on WeChat with the call center gang, but he was still conscious and did not immediately transfer the money. He also confirmed that he would report it to the police, but the call cente r gang threatened that if he reported it to the police, he would never see his daughter again, causing the victim's father to agree with the criminals. However, when they lost contact, the victim's father called Japan to find his daughter and reported her missing because he still suspected that his daughter was studying in Japan, but why was she being held for ransom in Thailand? Finally, he found out that his daughter had traveled from Japan to Thailand. After getting more details, the victim's father went to file another police report in China. Then he tried to contact Ms. Napapat, a Thai friend who did business with him, to help file a police report with Suvarnabhumi Airport and coordinated to see the CCTV footage. The surveillance camera at Suvarnabhumi Airport showed the victim entering Thailand at 3:04 p.m. on July 28, 2014, and at that time, he passed through immigration as usual and went to leave his luggage at a baggage storage shop in the passenger terminal. Later at 4:03 PM, he walked to get in to a green and yellow taxi, which the police saw clearly had a license plate, so they contacted the taxi service center to contact the driver. They found out that when he got into the taxi, the victim had given him his mobile phone with a pinned location to be dropped off at Soi Kasem San 2 in the MBK area, and the driver had driven him to the end of the alley, where the Jim Thompson Museum is located. Then, the surveillance camera footage showed that at 6:10 p.m., the victim walked out of the museum and changed into shorts before calling a tuk-tuk to take him to Chatuchak Weekend Market before moving into a condo in the Sukhumvit area. When they found out about this, the police went to inspect the room on the evening of July 30. It turned out that the victim was safe, with no signs of assault or injury whatsoever. They took her to meet the person her relatives had contacted and took her in for questioning, with Ms. Napapat, a business associate of the victim's father, joining the conversation. After quest ioning, Ms. Napapat said that her friend's daughter was indeed a victim. When she was studying in Japan, a call center gang lied to her, pretending to be a Chinese police officer, and threatened her, accusing her of breaking the law in China. They then tricked her into checking her bank account and tricked her into transferring money several times, totaling more than 2.5 million baht. At that time, she was afraid of the call center gang, so she did not tell her parents the details. So she lied to ask her mother for money, telling her that it was money for a study program. However, just transferring money was not enough. The call center gang also tricked her into leaving Japan and flying to Thailand, claiming that it would help ease the case. As for the clip that was sent to her father via WeChat, she was tricked by the call center gang to make it so that they could use the clip to extort money from her family. However, her father was still conscious and did not transfer the money to the call center gang imm ediately. However, they were able to track her down and found clues about his daughter first. Pol. Col. Chakkraphong Nuchpadung, Superintendent of Suvarnabhumi Airport Police Station, said that this is not the first case to occur because previously victims were deceived from Austria, New Zealand, Canada and Japan. In this case, it is believed that the perpetrators are likely Chinese and the victims were deceived by the group of perpetrators using psychology to trick them into believing that they were real police officers. Source: Thai News Agency