A 27-year-old woman from China feared to have been kidnapped here for a 5 million yuan (RM3.23mil) ransom has been found by police at a shopping mall in Bangkok.
The Bangkok Post reported that Lu Xinlei was located at HomePro BangNa, a store in Bang Na district, on the evening of June 8.
Lu (pic), who lives in Shanghai with her family, had been reported missing on June 7 after her father received a demand to pay for her release on Chinese messaging app WeChat the same day.
He was asked to pay 5 million yuan.
Upon receiving the ransom demand, Lu’s father kickstarted a search, which found that although she had bought a ticket to fly from Thailand to Singapore that day, there was no record of her leaving the country.
Her disappearance turned out to be part of a cyber-kidnapping scam, according to Thai news outlets.
The Bangkok Post reported that Lu, who worked for a property company in Japan, had received a call from scammers telling her that she had violated an anti-money laundering law.
The scammers, who claimed to be Japanese authorities, ordered her to transfer ¥17mil (RM508,490) for examination, depart for either Thailand or Singapore, and not to contact her parents in Shanghai.
After arriving in Thailand on June 5, Lu was ordered by scammers to change her SIM card and regularly move to different hotels.
After Thai police found her, she was taken to Bangkok’s Phra Khanong police station where she reunited with her mother and sister, who had flown in from China fearing she had been kidnapped.
A spokesperson for the Thai police assured the public that Lu was safe and unharmed, reported online media outlet Thaiger.
The spokesperson said: “We believe the scammers tricked both the victim and her family.There was no real kidnapping involved.” — The Straits Times/ANN
