Fraudsters developing fake hotel websites to attract gullible tourists have also reached Thailand. According to Thai media, the MYS Khao Yai hotel, popular among tourists, located in the Khao Yai National Park in Nakhon Ratchasima province, became a victim. More than 40 tourists became victims. The scheme is quite simple and already known in other countries: scammers created a fake page on social networks, deceiving unsuspecting tourists. As a result, the police issued a stern warning.
According to one of the victims, she booked a room at the MYS Khao Yai Hotel through Facebook. She deposited 14,100 baht as an advance payment into an employee’s cash account – but when she arrived at the hotel, her name was nowhere on the booking list. In an attempt to prove the payment, Chantana showed the money order receipt to the hotel staff, only to discover that the bank account in question had nothing to do with the hotel.
As a result, instead of her number, the tourist had to go to the police to file a complaint against scammers. At the police station, she found several more brothers in misfortune who arrived at the same hotel and gave money to the same scammer. Moreover, as a second couple of tourists complained, the social network of scammers was higher in the search results than the real one – that is, the scammers invested in advertising on Facebook and promotion of posts, collecting a lot of subscribers and responses to create the appearance of trust.
As a result, an investigation is underway. Investigators have uncovered the true identities of the owners of these two bank accounts and are trying to find out whether these people were integral members of a fraudulent gang or just pawns who sold their bank accounts to criminals, media reports say. The local authorities also issued a warning to tourists, urging them to be careful when booking accommodation, as MYS Khao Yai was not the only hotel affected by the scam.