Thailand’s Prime Minister says he almost fell for a scam call posing as another world leader

The scam call could target anyone, even Thailand’s prime minister.

Prime Minister Pethunthan Shinawatra said this week he received a fraudulent phone call from someone pretending to be another world leader, but he did not know who the person was.

“I could clearly hear from the voice that it was the voice of the country’s leader,” she said Wednesday, adding that the caller may have used AI to forge the voice of another leader. added.

It started with a voice message from someone asking how Petonturn was doing and looking forward to working with him. She texted to say she was okay and the other person said they would get back to her.

Ms Pethongthan, 38, who became the youngest prime minister in August and is the daughter of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, said the person later tried to call her, but “fortunately it was 11 p.m. so I went to sleep.” I couldn’t answer the phone,” he said. Shinawatra.

She noticed the missed call in the morning and texted back to arrange a call. She then received another voice message asking for donations, stating that Thailand was the only member state in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that had not made a donation.

When she received another email instructing her to transfer money to a foreign bank account, “I knew it wasn’t real,” Petonturn said.

She did not say when she received the message.

Southeast Asia has become a hub for telecom and other online fraud, particularly in the border towns connecting Thailand, Laos and Myanmar, which is mired in civil war. According to the United Nations, hundreds of thousands of people are trafficked into online crimes across the region.

Most trafficked people come from Southeast Asia, South Asia, mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, but some come from as far away as Africa and Latin America.

They are then forced to engage in so-called “pig butchering scams,” which use psychological manipulation and other techniques to lure others into online investments or fake romantic relationships to swindle them out of their money and, in some cases, life savings. . The fraud center targets people all over the world, including the United States.

Americans lost an estimated $3.5 billion to Southeast Asia’s fraud industry in 2023, according to the U.S. Institute of Peace, a nonprofit organization in Washington.

Earlier this month, a Chinese actor who went missing on suspicion of human trafficking near the Thailand-Myanmar border was found and returned to Thailand. According to Thai police, actor Wang Xing, 22, was planning to go to a casting call in Thailand, but ended up being trained to trick other Chinese people.

The incident was widely shared on Chinese social media, and authorities are calling for a crackdown on fraud.

Speaking at the ASEAN Digital Ministers’ Meeting in Bangkok on Thursday, Petonthan said online fraud is a serious threat to citizens and regional cooperation is needed to combat it.

He said authorities need to address the situation so as not to affect tourism, an industry on which Thailand relies heavily. China is one of the largest sources of visitors to the country.

China announced on Friday that Chinese and Thai police jointly arrested 12 domestic and foreign criminal suspects in connection with the fraud that led to the disappearance of Chinese nationals.