Thai victims of a "fake girlfriend" call centre scam were held captive and forgotten inside rented rooms in Cambodia for more than half a month by a Chinese group that were escaping a major Cambodian police crackdown.
On June 5, Col Bancha Charnchalad, deputy commander of the Burapha Task Force and Col Chainarong Kasi, commander of the Aranyaprathet Task Force, instructed the 1201st Ranger Company to intensify patrols to prevent illegal activities between checkpoints A.13 and A.14 at the Thai-Cambodian border in Ban Dong Ngo, Sa Kaeo Province.
Seeing a group of suspicious individuals crawling under barbed wire fencing, progressing across the deep canal towards Thailand, authorities decided to arrest the detected group for further questioning.
The arrested group were three Thai nationals, consisting of two men and one woman, who were not carrying passports or border crossing documents. All three escapees were later taken into the 1201 Ranger Company for further questioning.
Investigation revealed that all of them claimed to be victims of a call centre scam. The escapees said that in January, the three of them found work through “Jobs In Poipet” Facebook page. After joining the page, an administrator offered them positions, working as chat support staff for a relationship-orientated page.
After that, the scammers began tricking these victims into investing, promising high-yield returns. They then boarded a vehicle to the Aranyaprathet bus station, where another car brought them to a border crossing. There, a Cambodian national helped them through the border, walking on foot until another car picked them up at a work building in Poipet, Banteay Meanchey Province, where a Chinese investor was waiting to hire them.
The woman said she had worked for a scam operation since early this year and was confined in a rented room in Poipet from May 20 to June 3 after Cambodian authorities launched a crackdown on foreign workers. Her Chinese employer allegedly moved staff into hiding to avoid repercussions.
Later in the evening of June 4, Cambodian Police were notified of the information, and began searching the rented room. Realising authorities were closing in, the Chinese employer opened the door and fled, leaving the workers behind.
With nowhere else to go, the group asked local Cambodians for directions and escaped on foot, crawling under barbed-wire fences and crossing deep canals to return to Thailand.
They were later apprehended by Thai border patrol officers and said they were relieved to have survived the ordeal.
As the military rangers found no outstanding arrest warrants or identification cards of the escapees, they detained the three alleged Thai nationals and handed them over to the investigating officers at Khlong Luek Police Station for further legal proceedings.
The investigation has now expanded, hoping to bring the offenders of the smuggling/scam industry to face consequences through the justice system.
