A husband and wife have been arrested after stealing 400,000 THB of donation money from a cancer patient. Officials from the Crime Suppression Division (CSD) arrested Samrong 41 years old and Wilailak 40 years old on 7 March 2020 under the power of an arrest warrant issued by the Pathumwan Court.
The victim (Miss A) is a patient suffering from bone cancer, breast cancer, and lung cancer who went to file a complaint with officials at CSD Sub-Division 4. The victim had transferred over 400,000 THB into the 2 suspects bank accounts believing that the suspects were admins to a volunteer and donations for children and the society Facebook group. In July 2019 Miss A and her daughter who is also a cancer patient received donations from kind netizens.
The suspects saw an opportunity to make cash so they contacted Miss A claiming that they were the admins of a Facebook group aimed to help cancer patients. They asked Miss A whether she wanted to make donations towards saving bulls and cows from being slaughtered and to help another cancer patient in Kon Kaen Province. Miss A agreed and transferred 419,490 THB to the suspect’s savings account. After the transaction, Miss A called the number displayed on the Facebook page and asked whether the page had received her donations.
The real admin informed Miss A that there was currently no donation case for a cancer patient in Khon Kaen and the page had not received any donations to help save bulls and cows. The admin confirmed that Miss A had just been scammed. This is when miss A decided to come to file a report with the Pathumwan Police in Bangkok that led to the arrest warrants.
Investigation revealed that the 2 suspects are married living in an apartment in Nonthaburi Province. Both of the victims have been sent to the Pathumwan Police for prosecution. Information also reveals that Wilailak was previously arrested in 2018 after she pretended to work at a national newspaper company and that she had connections in the Paweena Foundation. Another victim had transferred at least 100k into her account. Wilailak states that she needed the money to pay off some unlawful loans.
