Thai Immigration Rescues 19-Year-Old Chinese Student in Pattaya Within 30 Minutes After Family Got a 2 Million Yuan Ransom Demand and a Threat to Cut Off His Arm
Thailand's Immigration Bureau said its rapid-response team rescued Yu Xuan, a 19-year-old Chinese student, from a hotel in Pattaya on November 14, bringing him out safely within about 30 minutes of an urgent assistance request from Chinese police. The student, who studies in New South Wales, Australia, had been lured to Thailand by a call-centre scam network, and his family had received a ransom demand of 2 million yuan, about 10 million baht, with a threat that his arm would be cut off.
Immigration Bureau Commissioner Pol. Lt. Gen. Noppasin Pulsawat said the student's parents received a six-second video from their son at about 11 a.m. on November 14. At about 1 p.m., someone using the student's WeChat account demanded 2 million yuan within two hours and warned that the son would be in danger. The family reported the case to Chinese police, whose checks showed the student had entered Thailand on November 13, and who then urgently asked Thai immigration police for help.
Noppasin classified the request as an immediate life-safety mission and ordered a mobile rapid-response team to Pattaya in Chon Buri province. Senior Immigration Bureau officers oversaw the operation; the team cross-checked arrival records and hotel registries, traced the student to a Pattaya hotel and brought him out safely and unharmed. Police believe a transnational call-centre gang lured the student to Thailand and then used him to pressure his family, a pattern known as virtual kidnapping.
The Immigration Bureau said the investigation into the network that contacted the family is continuing. Schemes of this kind, which target students studying overseas by cutting their normal contact with family and staging a fake emergency to extort money, have appeared in several countries in recent years.
(Source: Royal Thai Immigration Bureau)
Source: Royal Thai Immigration Bureau
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：泰国芭提雅海滩路一带资料图，事发酒店位于芭提雅。照片：Vyacheslav Argenberg 摄，CC BY 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: File photo of Pattaya Beach Road, Thailand; the rescue took place at a Pattaya hotel. Photo by Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
