Police are looking for a Chiang Mai woman who played on the heart of a lonely widower she met on Facebook to allegedly swindle him out of 4 million baht.
The victim, identified only as Preecha, retained celebrity lawyer Ronnarong Kaewpetch, head of the Network of Campaigning for Justice in Nonthaburi, to help him get justice against 32-year-old Nipaporn Jang Yuenmak, aka Nong Joy.
The two met in a Facebook chat two years ago and Preecha, 53, fell in love instantly. After chatting non-stop – but never actually meeting in person – they agreed to get married, with Nipaporn’s younger “brother” offering to write up a financial-support agreement.
However, before she actually came to Saraburi, “tragedy” struck: “Nong Joy” told her new fianc้ that her father had died and she needed 40,000 baht for his funeral. Soon after that, he mother supposedly died. And she needed 40,000 more. This time she even sent a funeral picture to convince him. He paid both times.
Later on, Nipaporn told her betrothed before she could move to be with him she had to sell three rai of land. However, the property was hard to sell because it had limited access to the road. So she wanted to buy another roadside parcel and combine them.
She asked if she could borrow 1.3 million baht, which she’d repay, once the land sold. Again, Preecha paid out and, strangely, the land never sold. Nipaporn blamed it on the coronavirus pandemic.
Then, amazingly, another crisis emerged. This time Nipaporn said she’d guaranteed a friend’s car loan, but he had defaulted, and she was now on the hook for 400,000. She needed Preecha to bail her out. And he did. It had now been two years and 4 million baht, but they still had never met.
Alarm bells never went off in Preecha’s head until, one day, a man answered her phone and her Facebook account was deleted. He couldn’t contact her for several weeks when she finally called him from a new number.
She claimed she was now working in Malaysia and she gave her old phone to a friend.
Preecha realized the “friend” was her lover and he’d been had. When he confronted her, Nipaporn called him a “fool” for believing her two years of lies, he said.
So poor Preecha, now left with only 10,000 baht in the bank, went to the local police station, which suggested he find a good lawyer. Ronnarong was only too happy to take the case.
Preecha told the lawyer that, over two years, he’d transferred about 4 million baht to the woman, leaving him with only 10,000 baht in the bank. He’d literally spent all his savings to find love with a women he’d never met.
Ronnarong said he’d try to track down Nong Joy, if that was her real name, and see what could be done. But – politely, of course – he said that this was the first time in his long career he’d ever met anyone that had transferred so much cash over so long a time without ever trying to meet his online love.
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