A Thai footballer, Pokklaw Anan, was defrauded of 2.7 million baht in a call centre scam, leading him to file a complaint with the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB) on December 2, 2024. The 33-year-old football player explained that he had visited a fraudulent website offering loans and followed the instructions to access a 600,000 baht loan. However, during the process, all of his savings—2.7 million baht—were stolen.
Investigators traced the stolen funds and found that the money had been transferred into six mule accounts. Three of these accounts were frozen, and four mule account holders were arrested. One of these arrests occurred in Soi Samakkee, Nonthaburi, where 20-year-old Chananya Duangsri was detained.
Chananya confessed to her involvement in the scam, admitting she had opened the mule accounts at the beginning of the year. She explained that a man, whom she met in Bangkok after traveling from her home in Khon Kaen, persuaded her to open six bank accounts in exchange for a 500 baht payment per account. The man later took her to Sa Kaeo province and facilitated her illegal border crossing to work for the scam gang in a neighboring country.
Her task was to verify her identity and receive money from scam victims by scanning her face multiple times a day. However, after her accounts were shut down, she was deported back to Thailand. She claimed to have earned only 10,000 baht for her work with the gang and said she took the job due to unemployment.
Chananya now faces two charges: public fraud (Section 343 of the Criminal Law), punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to 100,000 baht, and importing forged data into a computer system (Section 14(1) of the Computer Act), with similar penalties.
Authorities have yet to disclose the identities of the other three arrested mule account holders.
