Princess Ubol Ratana is supporting cybercrime police efforts to crackdown on call centre scams with a special episode on her popular “To be Number One” YouTube channel.
Episode 94, called “Being cheated online, lost 5 million baht.” has her acting as a call centre victim.
The clip serves as a warning and provides instructions on what to do if you have fallen victim to the scams, including reporting the incident and seeking assistance from cyber police.
In the episode, she demonstrates how to file a complaint with the cybercrime police and insight into how police investigate cases and catch the bad guys.
She was cast as “Kanda Sandee” who gets a call from a scammer claiming to be calling from KBank’s Chiang Mai branch. The caller tells Kanda that her bank account has been involved in drug dealing and money laundering.
When Kanda says she has never been to Chiang Mai, the caller transfers the line to a man claiming to be a police officer handling the cases.
The “officer” on the line convinces Kanda to transfer Bt5 million to him for “examination”, promising to return it if the investigation finds that she has nothing to do with the cases.
Kanda then transfers the amount requested. A genuine police officer tells her in the video that it would be very difficult to recover the money, because as the scammers immediately transfer the funds out of the country, once it is received in the local, bogus (mule) account(s).
The officer then explained that, in reality, there would not be a transfer of the call from one officer to another.
Watch : “Being cheated online, lost 5 million baht.”
Moreover, genuine police officers never ask people to transfer money for inspection.
The officer then instructs Kanda on how to file complaint with police, which can either be online or by going to a police station.
Meanwhile, Maj Gen Niwet Apawasin, deputy commissioner of the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau said that, in that last 16 months, 287,122 complaints concerning online-related scams have been filed. The combined losses are estimated at about four billion baht.
