Buriram: The owner of a barbecue pork restaurant brought evidence to a lawyer for help after a bank employee tricked him into lending nearly 700,000 baht. In the end, all the money was returned, but the employee embezzled the money to eat, travel, and spend on children. He urged the bank to take responsibility.
According to Thai News Agency, the owner of a barbecue pork restaurant in Buriram Province brought evidence to file a complaint with a lawyer after a loan officer tricked her into lending him 700,000 baht, claiming that he was only making a target to get a commission from the bank. However, he embezzled the money to eat, travel, and pay for children and did not enter the loan system even though he had already paid in full. When he reported it to the police, the owner promised to pay it back in installments but disappeared. To make matters worse, the bank only fired him, but then they came back to demand debt collection from him even though he was the victim. He asked the bank to investigate and help.
M
s. Patchara, the owner of a barbecue pork restaurant in Buriram Province, said that she knew the loan officer from a group of friends and that he had become close to her and tricked her into helping her apply for a loan, claiming that he was just making a target to earn a commission from lending money. She agreed to apply for the loan as requested by the loan officer, even though she did not need the money at the time. However, she thought that there would be no problem because the person who asked for the loan worked at the bank and was in charge of lending money himself.
Later, the bank approved it and on September 19, 2023, the bank transferred 699,645 baht to my account, the borrower, from the 700,000 baht I borrowed. The bank deducted the remaining amount as loan guarantee. However, after receiving the money from the bank on September 19, 2023, I transferred the first amount back to the loan officer on September 21, 2023, 400,000 baht, and transferred the rest in installments of 5,000-60,000 baht until
the full amount was borrowed within 6 months. The entire amount was transferred to the loan officer’s account, who said that he would be the one to enter the bank’s repayment system.
Until August 2024, an officer from the bank’s debt collection department called to inform her that she was in arrears with her loan payment, which shocked her because she had always understood that the money transferred to the loan officer would be entered into the bank’s debt repayment system. She immediately called the loan officer, but he claimed that he had already transferred the money but had not entered the system yet, and that he would handle it himself. The victim began to feel uneasy, so she checked with the bank and found that only a little over a hundred thousand baht had been paid off. The rest was still in arrears, so she decided to submit evidence to file a complaint at Buriram City Police Station.
Mr. Wira Yut, the lawyer who accepted the complaint, stated that the bank did not take any action against the employ
ee who committed the offense. They only informed the victim that they had been fired and then urged the victim to collect the debt. Therefore, they came to request justice and have the bank show responsibility by collecting the debt from the employee who embezzled the money. They did not just say that they had been fired and then collect the debt from the victim again, which would make things worse for the victim who had to find more money to pay. They viewed this as unfair because they were not the perpetrators. Initially, they submitted a request to the bank to clarify the facts of what had happened, including suspending the legal proceedings against the victim, and the bank should collect the money from the employee. As for the case that the victim filed a complaint, they recently learned that an arrest warrant has been issued for the credit officer in question.