Police issue scam alert during Songkran festival
published : 12 Apr 2023 at 14:36
writer: Gary Boyle
ORIGINAL SOURCE/WRITER: Wassayos Ngamkham
The Royal Thai Police (RTP) is warning the public to be on their guard against online scammers during Songkran after nearly 5,300 fraud cases were reported last week.
Most complaints were about online-shopping and bank transfer scams.
On Tuesday police said that reported losses the victims suffered amounted to 312.5 million baht.
Of all the 5,269 crimes reported, 2,600 were online-shopping scams with losses amounting to 34 million baht and 719 cases were job posting scams that saw 61.1 million baht in losses.
Another 539 cases were loan scams incurring 22.7 million baht in losses, 286 were online investment scams that saw 72.7 million baht in losses, and 276 cases were call-centre scams that resulted in 47.9 million baht in losses.
Police said that there had been an increasing number of online-shopping scams where products related to the Songkran Festival, such as flowered-pattern shirts and water guns, are posted for sale but victims do not receive the products after payment.
Another common crime is Ponzi schemes. Scammers usually create fake social media accounts using profile pictures of famous people and invite victims to invest their money, promising high returns.
Vocabulary
- amount to: constitute; to be considered to be something - ถือว่า, เห็นว่า, ประกอบด้วย
- call centre (noun): a place there workers answer telephone calls for other people and companies and provide information, perform some task or transfer the call -
- loan: an amount of money that a person, business, or country borrows, especially from a bank - เงินกู้
- ponzi scheme: an investment scam that promises big profits with little risk, older investors profit from money from new investors, but when new investors can no longer be attracted the whole thing collapses and all the later investors lose their money. (Source: Investopedia) - แชร์ลูกโซ่
- return: the amount of profit that you get from something; the amount of money you earn - เงินรายได้
- scam: a dishonest plan, especially for getting money - กลโกง, แผนร้าย
- scammer (noun): a criminal is clever at tricking you out of your money by taking advantage of any weaknesses they can discover - นักฉ้อโกง, นักหลอกลวง
- suffer: to experience something very unpleasant or painful - ประสบ
- victims : people who are killed injured or harmed in some way from an accident, natural disaster, crime, etc. - เหยื่อผู้เคราะห์ร้าย
