A group of foreigners and their Thai wives in Chonburi, Pattaya have filed a complaint against an assistant branch manager of a commercial bank on fraud charges after he had allegedly taken money from their accounts.

Around a dozen foreigners and their wives on Tuesday filed the complaint with the police colonel chief of Pattaya police station against a Thai employee, a former assistant manager of a bank branch in Pattaya who has commited fraud. Some of them also accused him of allegedly duping them into investing in some funds, causing them to lose money.

The irregularities were found when some of them updated their passbooks at other branches. They found the balances did not match what was shown in their passbooks. When they showed the passbooks and the transfer slips as evidence, they were told the documents were not the versions currently used by the bank. Some of them were also persuaded by the man to invest in mutual funds, which he claimed had given high returns. The victims did not suspect anything since the man held a high position of assistant branch manager at the time.

The damage was estimated at tens of millions of baht, according to the complainants. The police colonel said the bank had already filed a lawsuit against the assistant manager on theft charges after it found he had used the outdated versions of passbooks and documents to serve customers instead of destroying them as required by bank procedures.

He is now being detained at Pattaya court after a bail request was rejected, according to the Pattaya police chief. 

The police colonel has urged other people who suspected they might have been duped by the man to report to them so they could gather more evidence for further legal action.

SOURCE: bangkokpost.com

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