Police are preparing to seek arrest warrants for members of a scam gang believed to have driven a 19-year-old student to hang herself after they duped her into paying for an iPhone 13 that she never received.
A police investigation found the Mathayom 6 (Grade 12) student had contacted the “Hannah” mobile phone shop via Facebook to say she wanted to a buy a phone.
However, checks found the shop did not exist and the website gave a fake address in Mae Sai district of Chiang Rai.
The gang deceived the girl, who lived in the southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat, into paying for an iPhone 13 and made her issue a downpayment and pay for other expenses in instalments.
The girl ended up paying a total of 18,500 baht. The money was transferred to the phantom shop via a bank account held under the name of Dokkaew Kaewjerm. The account has since been frozen.
The victim was also tricked into transferring an additional 2,000 baht as a “guarantee” payment.
According to the police, the girl realised she was being cheated after having sent the last payment and not receiving a phone. She tried in vain to contact the vendor via a Line chat group, only to find she had been blocked.
Fearing she would be reprimanded by her family for borrowing money from two school friends to buy a device the family could not afford, she was overwhelmed with stress.
In her final chat message with her friends, she complained about the stress she was dealing with. When the teen’s messages suddenly stopped, her friends suspected something was amiss and alerted her family.
The girl hanged herself at her home in tambon Koh Thuad of Pak Phanang district in Nakhon Si Thammarat on Monday.
Koh Thuad police transferred the case to the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB) after the victim’s parents filed a complaint with the police online on Tuesday, said Pol Lt Gen Worawat Watnakhonbancha, the CCIB chief.
CCIB Division 5 officers are tracing the girl’s remittances to the vendor, as well as the bogus shop’s Facebook page and IP address, Pol Lt Gen Worawat said.
Police expect the suspects will be rounded up within two days. Evidence has already been gathered to issue arrest warrants.
Pol Maj Gen Charin Kopatta, the Division 5 commander, said the gang ran four mule bank accounts, one in Chaiyaphum and the rest in Chiang Rai.
The girl’s money transfers went to Chiang Rai, from where they would have been sent to a bank in border town of Tachileik in Myanmar, police said.
Ms Dokkaew, who owns the mule account that received the girl’s payments, denied any link to the gang when she was interviewed by police in Chaiyaphum.
She claimed she had no idea her personal data including her citizenship ID card had been used to open the account.
In Nakhon Sawan, the 27-year-old owner of a phone shop called “Family” filed a complaint with local police on Wednesday after learning the scam gang had used the shop’s logo on their web page.
